Spring Things

The kid digs spring.

First, we get to make orange juice. From all the orange trees our friends have. They are brought by the bag-full when friends come to dinner, or they are are left on our front porch by our 5-year old next door neighbor. They set up residence on the buffet in our dining room until it's time for them to meet the squisher.

You know, that thing:

And after squishing about 50 million oranges (don't worry; I did not use one of those soaking lentils in the juice)....

We get just enough juice for Ethan and me to share a glass. Refreshing!

So that is fun!

And then there is that whole "everything is blooming" thing.

Remember the beans Ethan planted a few weeks ago with our neighbors, that the gardener threw away? Yeah, well, turns out he didn't actually throw it away (sorry, gardener guy for hurling unfounded accusations your way). Rather, it got knocked over and buried in the bushes in our front yard. And then we found it, brushed it off and put it back on the porch. And it's sprouting! We're gonna have beans, people! Beans!

Recently, I joined a group on Facebook called No Time For Flashcards and I'm all crafty-artsy now (Ha!). The other day they had this activity on the Facebook page, and I decided to rush out to Target to buy the accoutrements to make it a backyard activity for our after school playdate.

Oh, but first, we made bagel bird feeders. I forgot to take pictures of the finished product (I wonder why I never became a photojournalist?!) If you look closely, you can see that there's a birdseed covered bagel hanging out in that blue bowl. After smearing it in peanut butter and rolling it around in seeds, I slid a piece of yarn through the hole and then hung it on a tree. Which was awesome, except the first bird that tried to dine on it knocked it to the ground, and Voila! Squirrel buffet. And nothing makes me happier than making squirrels fat and happy in my back yard.

Here's the spring sensory tub, with some awesome Mom-shaped shadows. I underestimated how much of a hit this would be, and that's great, but I feel badly for the hungry birds that are lurking in our trees, salivating (do birds salivate?) while Ethan plays with this giant tray (read: new & clean cat litter box--awesome craft tray!) of bird food. Bird food that is now laced with shiny, not-bird friendly sequins. So, you know, the neighborhood birds are really happy with me. Crappy bagel bird-feeders and trays of food that will kill them if they eat it. I'm GrizzlyfuckingAdams here, people.

And then there's soccer, which makes my kid happy like this:

And realize when I say "soccer," I mean throwing a white and black ball around to no place in particular, kicking it in no particular direction and then falling down on the ground, laughing. You know, like Beckham.

So spring is here, folks. And it's all good.