Losing Life's Simple Pleasures

We had a Spring Break stay-cation. Slept in every morning. No real chore structure. Ate fast food a few times. Generally lazed around.

We did try to do a few activities, though. Thursday afternoon I took the kids to see "The Lorax." It was fun, all of the kids watched the entire movie--oldest to youngest--and no one threw up. I counted that as a victory.

Last Sunday night, we asked the kids what one activity they would like to do during the week, and everyone overwhelmingly voted for bowling. So we schlepped the entire tribe to the bowling alley and then to pizza for lunch.

What got my dander up during these three activities was this: Why does every activity not satisfy kids on its own merits any more?

We go to the movie theater, and Hyrum and Micah beg to play the stupid arcade games, on top of movie tickets and snacks.

We go to the bowling alley, and before we'd finished the sixth frame all the kids were begging for junk food from the snack bar or vending machine and Evie couldn't be torn away from the video game with a steering wheel.

We left the bowling alley and headed to the pizza parlor, where Eve proceeded to melt down because she wasn't allowed to sit in the stupid token-operated Minnie Mouse car. Hyrum cried and cried when his balloon blew away.

What has happened to our society? No one is satisfied with simple pleasures any more--it's always MORE stuff and MORE excitement and MORE noise and MORE technology. more, More, MORE.  It can't just be brownies---where's the ice cream? It can't just be watching a movie--where's the special treat?

Not to sound like an old lady or anything, but I remember when going to McDonald's was a huge outing. I am the oldest of four kids, and my dad wouldn't give us many options on what we could order when we went--either a cheeseburger or hamburger (before the invention of McNuggets--I know. How did we survive?) and a small, non-refillable drink. Our family got two small orders of fries (really small), which we all SHARED as we sat around the table and ate, not raced through the meal so we could climb all over the play place and then cry when we lost a piece of our 25-cent Happy Meal toy in the ball pit.

I was annoyed. Here I thought I was providing some quality time for my family, doing things we don't do frequently, and they were left wanting more. I wish society would allow me to shelter my kids from all the bells an whistles of modern life and let me take them back to the days when I was young.  Where is this possible, anybody know?

Now I really sound old.

Saturday we spent much of the day working--cleaning out the garages, Saturday chores, cleaning Brad's office building, and picking dozens of oranges and juicing eleven gallons of juice to freeze (any idea how many oranges that is?  It's a lot, let me tell you.)  I love it when I can find real situations where my kids can do actual work and experience what it feels like to accomplish something worthwhile.  Not that they love it or anything, but I hope one day they will look back on these experiences with fondness and a desire to punish their own kids the way I punished them.

After all was said and done, Dad pulled out the kite--a simple pleasure of my windy Idaho childhood that my AZ kids rarely get to enjoy.

The video says it all.

Gone for good.

That's okay.  We won't have another perfectly windy kite day for at least eight months.