Little Artist

My little painter.  He's just so cute I had to share with you all.  This easel has been SUCH a massively popular thing with all three kids, and Henry is just now getting old enough to PAINT with tempera paint.  He enjoys it exceedingly, and spends a long, thoughtful time making his little masterpieces. 

Random bits and pieces

Spring has sprung!  It's so nice to have flowers to bring in from the yard again.  The house has been filled with daffodils, forsythia branches, hyacinths, and tulips.  Isn't that just the most cheerful sight?

Returning from last year's massive perennial planting efforts, forget-me-nots are blooming in the front garden.  Forget-me-nots are one of my all-time favorite flowers.  Rudy says to forget those flowers and look at the cute little doggie!

Here's Gregory with his rag doll ... I mean puppy.  Rudy is the most relaxed, laid-back little pup you could ask for.  At just 5 months, he's not at all yippy, yappy, or high-strung.  When Gregory holds him like this and scratches him on his chest, Rudy often nods off to sleep.  Speaking of sleep ... check out Gregory's sleep position from the other night.  Funny little kid!

And finally, have you ever seen a more pathetic face?  Rudy went to the vet yesterday, and came home just a little bit less manly.  He can't leave his stitches alone, so he has to have a cone head.  Oh, the humiliation!!

Spring weather has returned, thank goodness!

After what might have been the chilliest spring break in recent history, our nice, warm, springy weather returned this weekend.  We celebrated with a trip to the park. 

The kids had to do some digging and sliding, spinning and swinging. 

And then there was the dangling and the stretching.

And fire pole sliding ... and of course, OF COURSE, Gregory had to do some flying.

Not just a little bit of flying ... he jumped off that platform into the sand over and over and over.  But are YOU surprised to see him airborne?  I'm not.

Another Great Trip to the Grand Rapids Public Museum

We went to the Big, Big Bugs exhibit at the Grand Rapids Public Museum yesterday.  It was great!  We always have such a wonderful time at the kid-friendly changing exhibits.  The activities are JUST RIGHT for a group of kids like mine.  There are entertaining, educational activities to keep everyone busy for just about an hour, and then we're done.

There was a little "cave" that the kids could crawl into, and then pop their heads out quite close to the animatronic, dueling beetles.  As you can see, the small, medium, and large (relatively speaking) Mears kids all thought that was pretty entertaining.

Here's Henry, taking a look at a very gigantic caterpillar.  Grandpa came along on our outing, and it was SO NICE that Grandpa could just tag along behind Henry as he wandered from spot to spot in the exhibit, looking at things in a scattered, very toddler-ish way.  It was pretty crowded in there, and it would have been too hard for me to keep track of all three kids without spoiling Henry's fun.

There was a table in the exhibit where the kids could sift through a tub of otameal and scoop out mealworms, their pupae, and the beetles they turn into ... and then put them under those green discs, which are enclosed, elevated magnifying glasses.  They could watch the critters wriggling and crawling around, nibbling at the oatmeal.  Pretty nifty!

Here are all three kids in one shot!  The boys are building their own bugs from some building toys that were sort of like Struxx, Legos, and Tinker Toys all mooshed together.  Lily is reading about the tropical stick bug.

Check out the spider web that was set up for kids to climb.  Yes, we (and they) know that spiders aren't bugs.  That was plainly explained.  But spiders are natural predators of many bugs, and lots of bugs get caught in spider webs.  Plus, little kids love to climb this thing.  So who cares if there was a spider section in a bug exhibit??

As always, there were a zillion little sit-down activities that fit with the theme of the exhibit.  This game was a lot like the board game Carcasonne, but with ants.  There were also places to make crayon rubbings of a huge variety of different bugs, animatronic heads of several different bugs that illustrated the different ways that bugs use their mouths to get food (those were a little creepy, if I'm being honest), cages full of live crickets at various stages of their lives, lots of butterfly and moth collections, bug-themed computer games... just a ton to see!

Hi there...

Aaaahhhh.... spring!  These two little boys were just enjoying being out in the fresh air.  Henry loaded a large rock into his dump truck, because there's not much point in pushing around an empty dump truck!  And Rudy just snuffled around in the yard, always keeping quite close to Henry, but they didn't really interact much. 

It's daffodil season!  Big time!  Since all these daffys grow down at the old house, where nobody really goes that often, we're just picking all of the flowers as they bloom so that they can be enjoyed indoors!  It's Lily's duty to go out each day and check for newly bloomed flowers.  You know I have to scold and threaten her to get her to do it... right?

And ... what the heck?  I found this in the hayfield, right up by the bus stop.  Ray looked it up online, and it's apparently a variety of crayfish/crawdad.  I didn't know that they came in shades of blue, but clearly, they do!  I suppose this must have lived in the pond (or one of the other ponds in the neighborhood), and was carried off by a bird or other animal that wanted to eat it?