March Wash

The weather has been oddly... warm this March. Today, the temperatue hit 84 degrees in my van. And, it's March 14th! Alina recalls many frigid March days as a student at Northwestern. How can this be? And, Alina keeps wondering... "Should we put away all the winter coats, snow boots and gloves?" After all, it wasn't so long ago a big snow storm blanketed the ground in April (that was the year of Alina's brother's Eagle Scout ceremony).

The kids have been soaking up the sun, playing outside every minute.  Today, after dinner, we pulled out the buckets, hose and sponges and washed the van.  All three kids scrubbed and sloshed.  Elliott and Rosemary even had on bathing suits.  Gretchen rubbed and rubbed, imitating Steve's big sweeps along the sides of the van. She's only 17 months old but she does exactly what her siblings are doing at all times.

Speaking of Gretchen, she is our climbing girl who scales the swing set, climbs all over the sides and back of the couches, stands on the toilet, climbs in and out the bathtub on her own and mounts the bar stools (after dragging them where she wants to go). In fact, many times recently, we have put the bar stools in the garage just to keep our monkey on the ground!