It's 9 o'clock, the girls are in bed and I have that nice "Sunday night after a wonderful weekend" feeling. We had dinner at friends' Friday night, a birthday BBQ on Saturday, brunch with more friends here this morning and a fun bike ride/nature walk in the afternoon with the girls. Anissa carefully planned out the nature part by making list of things we needed to find: rocks, acorns, pine cones, a stick, grass, and a leaf. One thing she didn't put on the list, though, but we got anyway was another snowstorm. It started coming down shortly after we had parked the bikes in the garage. 

It's been nearly 2 years since we moved here and I still can't get over the mood swings of the weather. It's the second time this week that we enjoy a warm spring afternoon outside and get hit by a dump of snow immediately afterwards. Tuesday afternoon was even more extreme than today - it was 20 degrees and we played croquet in the backyard in the late afternoon, and then after dinner it snowed. And a lot, not just a few flurries, and all night long. If I wasn't feeling so warm and fuzzy inside from the lovely weekend I'd be more than a little annoyed about the blanket of white stuff outside. Wait until tomorrow morning when I have to clean it off the car!

Today the girls and I attended their friend Lochlan's birthday party, which included a home visit from the pet store and a menagerie of exotic animals. The girls got to see and touch a bearded dragon, a tarantula (I held it but Anissa couldn't bring herself to), a snake (Anissa did hold it, very calmly and bravely, even when it was approaching her face with its tongue), a rabbit, a puppy, a ferret, hermit crabs and a cockatoo. It was very exciting! After the animals were gone and we were in the bathroom washing our hands, I asked the girls what their favorite animal was. Anissa voted for the snake and Elianne the rabbit, but Elianne felt there was one animal that should have been included. "But," she said, "there was no hippo though!"

Now that would be some birthday party!

We spent nearly 13 hours in the car for a few days at my parents' house this weekend, but it was worth every second. The girls got to meet Pepere's new colts, paint Easter eggs, jump on the trampoline with their big cousins and woke up Saturday to a trail of chocolate eggs leading to many goodies from the Easter bunny. This shot was taken with my Mom's mom Lucille, their great granny.



A little aside: yesterday, Elianne and I dropped Mehdi off at work and stopped in for a visit at his office. Elianne hasn't been there in recent memory and kept asking, "This where you live, Papa? This where you live?" It feels like he lives there sometimes! On our way out we stopped to chat with some of Mehdi's colleagues and Elianne put on a show in the hall for the marketing department: she ran around in circles singing, "panties, panties, PANTIES!" Something she picked up from big sister.

On our way upstairs for bedtime stories tonight, Elianne spotted her hot pink sunglasses on top of the TV armoire. She insisted on wearing them while I read her the usual three books, peering over them in order to see the pictures in the soft light. When it came time to put her in bed and sing her a few songs, she refused to take them off. She said she wanted to sleep with them. I explained that it might not be very comfortable, but she screamed in protest when I tried to gently take them off. We both got a case of the giggles as I sang her a new bedtime song: I Wear My Sunglasses at Night. I know I'm potentially encouraging a new habit but I couldn't help myself! She did fall asleep with them on in the end, after a few requests for me to come back in the room and place them back on her head.

Postcript: After writing the above last night, I googled the lyrics to that Corey Heart treasure. I was sure the jumbled version I sang Elianne was nowhere near correct. It's been a long time since I played that cassette tape over and over in my room on my "ghetto blaster"- since grade nine, in fact. The lyrics are completely ridiculous. "Don't switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no." What on earth does that mean???

Oh, and there was no request for the shades tonight at bedtime. Maybe Elianne didn't want to hear my horrible Corey Heart impersonation again!