Dandelion days

The kids had a blast at the park. They played a little "coronavirus tag," as you can see from the big fruit ball clinging to Miriam's shirt:

Here are Zoë and Benjamin tossing and dodging fruit balls along the trail:




Here's Miriam looking a little impish after she threw a fistful of fruit balls at her brother:

It was a truly beautiful day, and one we sorely needed. Benjamin has been "sproinging" around the house—everywhere he goes he just...bounces. It's been driving everybody insane and he's injured himself several times by sproinging into something and losing his balance or whatever.

He needed to run some energy off. In this picture you can see Zoë, and then Miriam is up in front of her, and then you can see a stranger approaching us on the far left of the picture. Benjamin is way down the trail in front of everybody, just zipping along:

Rachel and Alexander were with me:

We took things a little slower since we had Alexander—buckled fully—in his stroller.

The kids were excited to find a bounteous patch of dandelions by the soccer fields. They made wishes....

 

Picked bouquets...

Slid down the hill and got absolutely filthy...

 

And found dandelions almost as tall as Alexander:




Benjamin invented a game called "yeet the weed." You just pick a weed and then see how far you can "yeet" it. Yeet is a word kids say these days (and my children definitely all say it when they yeet).









Rachel's a pretty good yeeter:








We made a dandelion crown:




And Miriam braided some dandelions into Rachel's hair:







Here's Alexander making a few more wishes:




Everyone wanted a turn wearing the dandelion crown:




Zoë wanted to keep it forever and ever. When we got home I sent her to the backyard and noticed that she didn't have her crown anymore so I asked her what happened to it. "Oh, I hung it up in my room to keep it safe," she said. So I explained that a dandelion crown is a one-day thrill. It's not something you can save for later—you have to enjoy as much of it as you can until it wilts and decays. So she ran up to her room and put it back on to play outside some more.






Here's Miriam:





And Rachel:




And Alexander, whose little face is looking so much better a week later:




And here's Benjamin, my filthy, filthy boy:



I forgot to even consider taking a picture of myself with the crown, but here's the one selfie I did take:

We circled by the van and put our scooters away so we could walk around a bit more to do some leap-frogging and balance-beam-walking and things of that nature:




Oh, and Miriam turned herself into a hippie:




More days like this in the future, please...