Day 10: Not Saturday

The 3yo woke me up at 5am with a pantload. I got up, got him cleaned up, and then realized what time it was. Since it was Saturday and everyone else was still sleeping, I was not about to stay awake. So I outfitted him with some milk in a sippee cup and a fully charged tablet, and plopped him down in the bed next to me and went back to sleep. For once he complied and actually let me sleep until around 7am. And boy, was I disappointed to find out that it's only Friday. Well my motivation level took a big hit after that.

Spring has sprung. The tulips and crocuses have started to poke out of the ground, and the irises and jonquils are in full bloom. Just in time for more snow. For the unindoctrinated to Colorado's climate, March and April are typically the two snowiest months of the year. We've just had our first Spring, and pretty soon we'll have our second Winter, second Spring, third Winter, and then Summer (if there isn't a third Spring and fourth Winter, that is).

What I'm doing today

Hiking - Took all three kids hiking up in Black Forest this morning. Between the 3yo kicking sand and dirt in my shoes, the 5yo complaining that she wanted to go home, and the 7yo wielding a trekking pole like a light saber, it was fairly enjoyable. We got a close-up look at the burn scar from the 2013 forest fire that devastated the area. It's a teachable moment: "AND THIS is why we don't play with matches!" We even saw some oddly bent trees that were probably somehow the result of the fire, but I may have convinced the kids that they were caused by Bigfoot.

Fixing - The boys managed to break a fan in their room that hasn't moved or been turned on in several months. So I took it down to my newly organized workbench and fixed it. Nothing special. It just needed some glue. Hey, they can't all be innovative approaches.

Beading - My wife bought the kids an activity called Water Beads. They're basically little pebbles that expand into squishy, marble-sized beads when soaked in water. And there are thousands of them. And I hate them. They are  fun, and they provide hours of entertainment, but they get everywhere, they are impossible to pick up off the floor, and they get ground into slime when you inevitably step on them. My recommendation for anyone wanting to play with these is to use them somewhere that you don't care if there are thousands of multicolored slime stains--like in an abandoned quarry or a landfill.