A sunny snow day

This morning fat, fluffy snowflakes were streaking down to the ground—they didn't stick, though, because the ground was far too warm to allow for that. Yesterday was beautiful! It was our first snow day, which is a sign that winter is coming to an end (was it ever here?). The year-round schools used up one of their snow days earlier in the season but as luck would have it the traditional-calendar schools already had that day off so when Friday rolled around (a "teacher workday" or "PD day" as I grew up calling them) we were free to enjoy the glorious sunshine.

We set up a visiting teaching playdate at the Museum of Life and Science. I drove there all by myself and parked (in approximately the farthest parking spot) on the first try. While we waited for our friends to show up the kids ran around this planter. We waited for a full half hour before everyone got there. The kids ran around the planter the entire time. I do not know why they aren't that easily entertained at home.





We had a nice crew show up. My visiting teaching companion Magie and two of the women we visit teach (Stephanie and Heidi), as well as all of our kids—anyone less than a year old were of the male persuasion (Benjamin and his friends Leo and Drew), anyone age 2 and up were of the female persuasion (Rachel, Miriam, and their friends Lily and Andrea).

Our first stop was the dinosaur dig area, which was rather quiet and unoccupied. The girls enjoyed digging holes together while the mothers busily kept the boys from choking on rocks and sea shells and things.

Watching baby Drew crawl around exploring with his soother tucked safely in his mouth gave me another bout soother envy. They certainly come in handy as a plug—keeping screams in and choking hazards out. So far I've yet to meet a baby of mine who found them acceptable.

My kids have always taken to dirt far easier than any of them took to the pacifier (for example, see Miriam announce mud is yummy here). This it was so rocky I didn't give Benjamin much opportunity to get his little fistfuls of dirt into his mouth so he instead spent his time licking the sand sifters. I'm sure that was a very sanitary activity.

He was far less capable of interested in actually digging but looks kind of cute with the mini shovel as a prop...

The sand/rock/dirt stuff they have at the dig is imported from some site along the coast so it's filled with fossils and sea shells and fun things like that. 

Miriam was very proud of the shells she found.

When we were all tired of digging (whether we were digging for shells or digging rocks out of mouths) we left to Explore the Wild, which is possibly my favourite place to walk in the whole park.

Rachel showed the littler girls how to work the cameras so that they could zoom in on the bears, who were relaxing in their cave.



There was a little post by the computer—I think it's probably used to support a shade structure in the summer—so I sat the girls on it to take their picture. Miriam was willing...until she actually got up there.

She wasn't a fan of sitting that high but did her best to be brave.

Rachel was a little too brave and suggested that I sit her on the fence post a couple of feet behind her for an even better picture.

"I'm not going to put you up there!" I said. 

"Why not?" she asked.

"Do you know what lives behind that fence? A couple of bears."

"Oh, yeah," she said.

Now, truthfully, I think the fence is only there to keep humans away from the bears. The fence is short enough that I doubt it would actually keep an eager beaver bear at bay (there's a ravine behind the fence to do that job) but I still think it's unwise to balance live bait children on a fence designed to keep them away from carnivorous animals. Rachel agreed that might be true.

We finished walking through "The Wild" and then did a little bit of exploring on our way back to the main entrance, stopping at the park to play for a few minutes to let the girls get the last of their wiggles out while Benjamin rested and I got the nerve up to get behind the wheel again.

I had to try reversing like five times before I was able to get out of the stall—people just kept driving all around me...and it was all very terrifying. In retrospect I think they only wanted my parking spot, but backing up is difficult enough for me without an audience so I'd start backing up and then drive back into the spot and then start backing up and then drive straight back in again. I'm sure I was driving everyone in the parking lot crazy but they were making my life far too complicated by expecting me to back up without hitting the cars beside me, the cars parked across from me, and then them as well. Sheesh.

We did eventually get out of the parking lot and all the way home, though.

The girls were sad that we skipped all the indoor activities but I was happy that we spent the whole day in the sunshine because today was so drizzly. I could do with a few more lovely days and a few less drizzly days but I can't really complain when we had no snow stick at our house while my friends in Boston got several feet of it!