April vacation - did you recharge your batteries?

Parents and kids work hard, juggling work and school, sports and friends. Sometimes it is nice to just unplug from the electric current that runs through all our lives and get away, and April school vacation is perfect timing.

Thanks to a friend (Jake and Ann, thank you!), we spent some family time together at Smuggler's Notch resort near Stowe, VT. Nestled in the mountains, Smuggs is a place we can go to just... well, do anything. Play. Zipline. Enjoy the mountain scenery. Sleep in, swim, sample Vermont fare (cider donuts!) and spend time outside together without an organized sport involved. Even spot a moose.

Lesson learned? Although we juice up on that electric current we call life with two tweens, it can actually sap our true strength and overpower who we really are. Sometimes we forget, right? I remembered how Olivia's got an uncanny ability to sing non-stop and how she dives into every challenge in a way that is so different from me. We enjoyed Owen's smart, dark humor, coupled with his newfound ability and power to skip stone three times, and how we watched him build a bridge in a cold April creek... and without prompting, collaborated with his younger sister and maybe even enjoyed her company.  And we got some well-deserved time together to just walk, laugh, and even just stand on a bridge over a flowing river, taking it in, letting the river's strong current just flow underneath us, without any input or guidance from us.  (What a metaphor.)

Now if only we could lose the phones and iPods and silly handheld games... any tips? Baby steps...

How did YOU spend quality time on your April vacation? Please leave a comment below.