sunny days

Wednesday morning was beautiful -- the sort of day you would have hated heading off to work or school, knowing that the sun was out and air was perfect. Fortunately, no one had anything particularly urgent to do, so we set off on a family adventure, biking/walking/bouncing down to Cedar Mill school. We played disc golf in the park there, aiming for trees and posts and playground equipment, and then looped back through Jackie Park and the Jordan Woods.

 Skunk cabbages in the Cedar Mill creek!

Grandma Raab very kindly sent us a subscription to Bitsbox, a kit that teaches kids how to write simple codes and then encourages them to creat their own. Liesl fell into it and had so much fun doing the enclosed challenges and then going beyond them.

Meanwhile, Sebastian decided to dig out all our Christmas lights and string them around his room - 5 sets! He participated in his various new distance learning Google Meets (he had them with science, math, and language arts/social studies teachers this week) with these lights in the background. :) And the kids also had a laughing round of dodgeball with these mini-nerf footballs we have lying around. They were whipping them at each other and diving around and giggling, and then they left their lair to come attack me and Steve upstairs.

Friday's baking: rice krispie treats (from a smitten kitchen recipe). I don't think I've ever made them before, as marshmallow is not my favorite flavor, but I'm running low on flour and these were super easy and surprisingly good. The kids were thrilled.

And then there was today's crowning glory: we went for an afternoon walk and I taught Seb how to flick the heads off of dandelions while chanting "mama had a baby and its head popped off!" I don't think I've remembered that, or thought about it, or done it, for 25 years. Amazing what a little quarantine will bring back! Seb was surprised and then tickled at this goofiness, and we had fun shooting dandelion heads at each other all the way home. I also showed him that you could color your face yellow with the flowers, and that too was enthusiastically embraced.

This was wonderful: a Mah family Easter Zoom! Loved seeing all my family in Canada to say hello.

We dyed the rest of our Easter eggs, the kids put together our hundreds of mismatched plastic egg shells, and Jasper looked on, longingly.