More glorious spring weather here, and by glorious I mean that it hit sixty and the sun was out. All day. We go batty the minute a six threatens to be the first digit of the temperature and yank out all our dusty, unused summer gear (which always reminds me of my childhood in the UK, when we’d drag out deckchairs at the first sight of sun). And then we freeze while we sit at little league games in 55 degree windy, but sunny weather. Ah, Seattle. Apparently, that’s what they make summer fleece for, or so I’ve been told. (The very sight of it makes me queasy, but not as queasy as awful canvas sandals on unkempt Northwest feet.)
It did warm up by midday and at some point, the kids were all playing, the baby was asleep and I think M was too, and I stretched out in a chair on the deck, looking at this:

Before long I too was napping. While I slept, Frances put flowers in my hair. And Bennett made a garlic smoothie in the kitchen.

I should know better than to fall asleep.
Still, the nap was sublime and I had all the energy I needed to take the three girls biking in the afternoon while the boys were roaming the neighborhood looking for trouble (their current game of choice, by the way, is Escape from Germany. I don’t even know if they fully understand what they’re playing, but who doesn’t love seeing Jewish neuroses played out on the  playground?) We finally got Francie to ride the 2.5m loop along the Lake Washington peninsula in Seward Park. She still has those damn training wheels on, and I know that the PowersThatBe rewarded me for whining about my badly behaved boys by giving me a girl who thinks a speed bump is a small hill and has to dismount, and walk her bike over it. But today I tried a new tactic. No more cajoling. No more begging. This time I shamed her. When she asked me to walk with her while she biked I told her that I couldn’t walk that slowly (true) and that I needed to help Fi on her ridiculous, but all-the-rage skut-type bicyle. I think I may have even said something along the lines of Fi riding faster than her. Well, she showed me. She still got off the bike for speed bumps, but she took off, and rode that loop and then collapsed into a heap on the playground floor when she was done.
I think I won that one.