Fun with Weeds

I haven't posted pics of the kids in awhile so here's what we've been up to.... Today Nathan, Jamie, Georgia and I played with dandelions. Phil thought it would be a good idea for the boys to round up these weeds before they went to seed and got blown all over the lawn so they picked "flowers" for mama yesterday. I showed them a trick I learned as a kid - to pop the heads off and split the stems into two or three long pieces, then place the split stems in water to watch them curl up. It was a very important scientific experiment.Some of them curled and some of them didn't... We made predictions of which ones would curl and which ones would "stay long." We counted the curly ones and the straight ones... We could have got carried away and made a graph, but we just watched instead. It was more fun that way.I had to laugh when Georgia said, "Wow Katie, you're just like a teacher!" with real excitement and I half expected Nathan to roll his eyes. It was great. Just wait - Wednesday, I'm sending Jamie to school with yarn for show and tell... I've been waiting all year for them to study the letter "Yy"! (Yes, I know... I'm a dorky mom.)

Before the rain bombarded us last night and today, we had about 48 hours of lovely weather. Unfortunately, I spent most of it inside the church on Saturday helping out at our annual spring bazaar and inside the Everett Events Center yesterday as a delegate for the Democratic Convention. While I was there, Phil decided to take the kids to the Lego store in Bellevue and then they visited a beautiful park nearby - I was sorry to have missed it (even though I was glad to have participated in the convention and hear Governor Christine Gregoire speak - She's amazing!)

Fortunately, we had spent some quality time together outside the night before. It was so warm we decided to have a picnic dinner on the lawn. I wanted to barbecue, but the grill was all nasty and needs a thorough cleaning before we do that so Phil went out and picked us up some DQ. Check out Evelyn's reaction when she realized we were having ice cream for dessert: (And check out those scraped up knees too!) She spent a good half hour with that spoon and got Blizzard ice cream all over her dress, and legs, and the blanket as well as her face. It sure was cute. I know it looks like my kids are dressed a little light for spring in Washington State, but really we couldn't believe how warm it was - I'm sure it was in the 70's! When the sun went down though it did get a little chilly and it was time to come inside... for a bath. Our little neighbor, Stephanie, came over to see what the fuss was about. And look how clear the sky was! We thought maybe the warm weather would be here for awhile, but sadly it was rain and mini hailstorms for us again today... Therefore, we spent a bit of time tidying up and had some indoor fun with weeds.