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I love the heat, and the weather is perfect for me this weekend. It was a great weekend for the kids too. Tae Kwon Do had a fundraiser car wash.

The car wash was a big success, but so early in the season I did not have sun block on the brain and the Artist suffered for it. She held signs and washed cars for nearly four hours yesterday, so today she is bright pink.
The Engineer might still be contagious, so I did not have him help his classmates at the car wash. He did get to enjoy some outdoor time while Daddy was home with him. The practiced with his pitching machine in the morning.

When I came home from errands, I got to see him take a few pitches. And I also saw this:The neighbor kids had pulled up some chairs to watch the action!

After lunch, the Engineer went out again, this time to play croquet. And when the neighbors came back out they were enjoying snacks and watching the sporting action. It was just too cute for me to pass up taking photos.

These kids have been exposed to the Engineer during his whole illness, so we saw no harm in inviting them to play along. The three of them had a grand time.

Sunshine

No sunshine around here. There was some earlier in the day, but tonight's baseball game is weather threatened. Such is April in Cleveland.

This week is chock full of swim lessons, two field trips, a physical therapy appointment, a last minute doctor appointment for the Engineer and dental appointments. There were two full school days planned. Monday was one of them, and it worked out that we accomplished all our goals for that day.

The rest of the week appears to be shot. The poor Artist came home from a field trip today with news that she had been sick. That's no way to enjoy a museum. I feel so badly for her. And thank you, Barb, and any other of you wonderful Looper moms who helped take care of her. She's still on the sofa with fever and chills and a bucket.

The field trip was to the Canton Museum of Art, where the group admired the Kimono as Art: the Landscapes of Itchiku Kupota exhibit. I got to read about the exhibit and I thought it sounded wonderful. The painstaking techniques Mr. Kupota used in having kimono fabric as a canvas for a work of art is amazing. The Artist's interest in textiles put this right up her alley.

Over the weekend I was telling a friend that I'm preparing for our upcoming beach vacation by sparingly using some sunless tanner once a week. Today's the first time I could see some results. It seems it has taken a while to kick in. I plan to stop now so I don't look like a beach ball -- shades of blue swim suit and orange skin-- when I'm actually at the beach! With any luck there will be lots of shade for me to hang out in while I watch my family enjoy the sun.

TEA Party in Cleveland

Yesterday was cold, gray and damp, a perfect day for a hot cup of tea. But instead we went to a full fledged tea party along with around 5000 other folks from northeast Ohio.

"It's a Bad Kitty"

And it's creator is so proud!
My cousin's youngest son participated in a car competition with his Boy Scout group. He won the trophy for Best Tiger Theme on the Pack level, and the trophy for Best Scout Theme at the district level.

Way to go, Kiddo! Every time I've been around Boy Scouts events I've been very impressed with the people involved and the activities they've participated in.

Today's the Day!

At 1:05 Cleveland time my radio will be on, school will be done for the day and I'll bring out my knitting. It is time for Baseball!

I suppose the forecast for 2 - 6 inches of snow around the radio station's listening area confirm that it is a good thing the Tribe is opening in Texas. Hopefully our weather will do that typical Cleveland thing and it will be 60 degrees and sunny for the home opener on Friday.

Tulip Drama

I'd been thinking lately that I should go and refresh the deer repellent that I strew around our shrubs in the back yard. The snow is gone, mostly for good. The bushes look like they have sustained some nibbling, but they are not completely devastated.

After refreshing the repellent, I looked around the rest of the garden beds. There is lots of work to do. The dozen or so bags of yard waste we got rid of last week helped, but there are two more beds to clean out, and one is large.

Last of all I looked at the front of the house. The tulips should be showing some leaves by now.

To my horror, I found my tulips are the latest item added to the deer buffet. The previous owner of our house had planted this pretty row of 40-60 tulips in the front bed. Every year we've enjoyed them tremendously. This year, alas --they've been munched. I'm not sure we will have even 10 lonely blooms. I was probably a week too late in getting the repellent refreshed in the back. Now I see I'll need to begin using it in the front of the house too.

At the Movies

Every once in a great while we will go see a movie at the cinema. We're on the once-a-year plan or there abouts. When we have a special occasion, such as this weekend, though we sometimes head out to see a show.

With family visiting from out of town, we headed off to the cinema. There were two offerings available to us, being that we were a party of four adults and two children. "Monsters Vs. Aliens", and "Race to Witch Mountain" were showing, and it was no contest for me.

Would I rather see another iteration of the tired formula of liberty-siphoning propaganda coming from sassy, selfish, impertinent creatures set in child-friendly colorful cartoons? or some live actors portraying an action adventure story?

No contest. Thankfully, the Artist and the Engineer were also turned off by the ads they had seen for Monsters vs. Aliens.

We saw about half an hour's worth of previews (yawn). Rick and I whispered to each other that two of the movies previewed looked bad, one for being environmentalist overkill and the other for being blatantly anti-American.

When the feature show finally began, our whole party was hooked into "Race to Witch Mountain" right away. It was fun, action packed, exciting, a little scary in some parts according to our pre-teen and our 7-year old. The best part was, through the whole movie there was not a scene I wished I could have shielded my kids from seeing, and not one word I'd rather them not hear. We had fun at the show and enjoyed talking about it afterwords too. There was one thinly veiled political issue briefly addressed in the script, but it was skirted so quickly I could forgive them. And the great, repeated, use of a certain product logo placement lent a great irony that Rick and I particularly enjoyed.