73°F

Tomorrow's forecast has been a little iffy. It keeps switching between plain ordinary rain and heavy snow, depending on which side of freezing things are supposed to be. Right now it's just rain, but even that hardly matters because it's supposed to drop below freezing overnight, so I'm guessing Friday morning will at least be bring us a delayed-start to our day.

I was supposed to have a doctor's appointment on Friday morning and I really didn't want to end up missing it so I called this morning to see if I could switch to Thursday morning and they had one opening so I grabbed it. So let that three-hour delay come! I might not have eggs or bread or milk but at least I'll have a doctor's appointment under my belt.

Today though? Today was beautiful and to celebrate we went outside without sweaters on.

"Out a sweaty?" Benjamin asked quizzically when I announced we were ready to go this morning after we put on shoes.

"Without a sweater," I told him. "It's nice outside. Try it."

He pushed open the door and stepped outside, immediately spreading his arms and lifting his face into the sunshine.

"That's nice!" he agreed. But he insisted on getting a sweater anyway.

Oh, spring. You're such a tease! Can you just be here already?

Apparently Rachel's teacher admonished her class to keep their jackets on because, and I quote, "just because it's warm outside doesn't mean that spring is here, so keep your jackets on!"

"But I didn't listen to her," Rachel said. "It was so hot running around I had to take my sweater off!"

I told her that was fine because it doesn't really matter what season it is—if it's hot outside you can take your jacket off and if it's cold outside you can put a jacket on. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, whatever. Dress for the weather, not the season.

Benjamin and I wore shorts and t-shirts today. Miriam wore a dress without pants underneath, which she was excited about.

Our first stop of the day was the library for Dr. Seuss's birthday party. We listened to some stories, sang some songs, watched an enactment of Green Eggs and Ham, made Cat in the Hat hats, played Pin the Star on the Sneech, made Cat in the Hat snacks with slices of banana and strawberry, and took some pictures at the photo booths. We skipped the face painting because face paints are terrifying according to my children. We had quite a bit of fun!

Snack Time!

Two Things and I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2

Two Things with the Cat in the Hat

Visiting The Onceler's Lerkim 

Pin the star on the sneech

This little sneech is the best on the beach

After the party we headed over to the museum to spend some time outside. We went to the museum yesterday as well but it was so drizzly and dreary that we just did all the inside stuff. Today was a perfect day to play outside. We visited the farm, the butterfly house, and the dinosaur trail.

I thought this was a nice shot with the snow and the palm tree, the shade and the sunshine—oh, and the kids:

Benjamin was quite interested in the tank of crawfish. This little guy was particularly social:

In the butterfly house we came across this species of butterfly, which Miriam thought was funny:

At the dinosaur dig I sat and crocheted while the kids played. Benjamin kept trying to scare me by pretending he was a T-Rex.

He's got a mouthful of cracker in this picture and is so intimidating 

Here we are finishing up the dinosaur walk:

Oh! How could I forget?! I almost died on the dinosaur walk today!

Miriam had just informed me she was going to beat me to some landmark and I was like, "Yeah, you will!" because I'm not really into racing lately. I was toddling along beside Benjamin when he stopped to look at something, so I stopped, too, and then there was a whoosh right in front of my face and a crash right in front of my feet.

A tree branch had fallen from who knows how high and missed me by just a couple of inches—had I moved just one step forward I would have been pegged by the branch and it would have, at the best, hurt a lot!

Fortunately, it missed both me and Benjamin and the other mom and tot who were on the trail. She was a little ways in front of us and instead of doing anything remotely humane like saying, "Holy cow! You're so lucky that missed you! Are you alright?" she just screamed, picked up her daughter, and ran away as if the whole forest was in danger of toppling over that very minute. I thought that was a bit of an odd reaction. Hopefully she would have stuck around had the branch actually hit me...

Anyway, rogue tree branches aren't the only scary things lurking in the forest. There's also an Albertosaurus. I asked Benjamin if he'd let me take his picture in front of it and he was all over the idea until he realized that in order to take the picture I'd have to let go of his hand and move to the opposite side of the sidewalk. He didn't like that arrangement at all, but Miriam snagged him by the collar before he was able to flee into my arms, so I got this picture:

Here's Miriam bravely facing the Albertosaurus all on her own:

And here's what she did when I asked her to do her "best pose":

Once home we had nap time (for me and Benjamin) and reading time (for Miriam) until Rachel got home. Then we had homework time. When that was finished the kids went outside and played their little hearts out until we called them in for dinner, which we didn't do until after it got dark because they haven't had a nice day to enjoy in quite awhile and the next couple of days don't look very promising in the outdoor play department.

Here are my girls up a tree:

They eventually migrated to the backyard to play soccer and by the time we called them in for dinner there were four little neighbourhood boys in our backyard playing with our kids. This is only noteworthy because our street is undeniably girl-heavy. Our backdoor neighbours are boys though (one is Rachel's age and one is Benjamin's age), and then there's Diego and the twins next-door. Usually we're overrun with girls, but not so today! Today our girls were completely outnumbered in gender but they had a great time and came in hot and exhausted from their game of soccer.

We had pancakes for dinner and I thought I'd make some blueberry syrup to go with it. This was a messy (but still yummy) decision:

After dinner we went on a family walk and looked at the stars. After spotting Orion and Venus and Cassiopeia and the Dippers, Benjamin wanted to find the moon. This was tricky because the moon was practically full. I pointed it out to him (it was behind him) and he watched it as we walked down the street.

"Me walk, moon bounces," he observed. "Look! Me walk, moon bounces! Watch this! Me walk, moon bounces. Me walk, moon bounces. Me walk, moon bounces."

"That's because you're bouncing when you walk," Andrew explained. "So the moon is not actually bouncing—you are."

"No," Benjamin insisted. "Every time me walk, moon bounces. Every time!"

As my friend Sara quipped on Facebook, "That's just science."

You can't argue with science.