Good Ol’ Groundhog

I am so happy that Spring seems to be coming a bit early this year.  In spite of a few days of heavy rain (which apparently we need) we have enjoyed some beautiful weather lately.  In honor of the groundhog’s prediction we bought the big kids new bikes which they really really needed! They were riding these teeny tiny bikes that made them look like clowns at the circus!!  These new bikes are definitely an upgrade-complete with gears and everything!!  They love them:

 

Hannah is riding her big girl bike a lot now…but never when my camera is out!  She seems to know when I want to catch her being a big girl, so this is all I have:

She was showing off on the baby bike…trying to ride with no hands.  She barely missed the cat.

Speaking of the cat…she is really living up to her name, ‘fatty patty’.  Check it out:

…and now she doesn’t have the pregnancy excuse.  We made sure of that!  But she is a good little outdoor kitty (for the most part).  Matt spoils her to death in spite of his “allergy”.  He gives her a treat every night, and most Saturday mornings she wakes up to a bowl of milk.  (gee.  I wonder why she’s so fat)

Chassie, on the other hand is more trim than she has ever been in her adult life.  She has been on a steady diet of runs, walks and/or swimming-especially on the weekends.  She is so happy to have nice weather return because she knows that her owners have no excuse for not going out and exercising (dammit). 

But back to the kids!  BenBen is actually the outdoor instigator.  Anytime the weather is nice, (and even when it’s not) he will run up to me and yell, “UNNDATSIDEWAGON!!!!”  (or something like that).  He loves his wackin’ (not to be confused with the conventional ‘wagon’ that is NOT used to ram into people’s ankles) and knows exactly where we keep it:

UNDAT!!! UNDAT!!  he says.  And when we get it out he chases everyone around the yard with it:

Except when it needs routine maintenance:

…but then he’s back to chasing and wackin’:

And speaking of chasing, one of Caitlin and Matthew’s favorite games is tag…they spend so much time racing around the front yard and tagging the base:

Shew!  Thank goodness for the base!!

Hannah usually plays too, (running around madly yelling, GET ME!! GET ME!!) but today she made a late appearance-apparently the entourage was more difficult to round up than usual:

She rarely goes anywhere without Stretchy, Giraffe, Stretchy’s Daddy and a few of the Tinys. 

While Caitlin and Matthew have always been best of friends and usually spend most of their time together, I’ve noticed that they are not exclusive…very often Ben and Caitlin/Matthew and Hannah will team up to play together.  Today, that was the case…Caitlin wanted to drive Benben in the Gator and Pea wanted to play with Matthew.  So they split off:

Matthew and Hannah were playing some game where they collected berries to cook in the playhouse…

And Caitlin was perfectly content to drive Ben around and around the yard.  Since riding around is Ben’s favorite activity, he was thrilled:

I hope this nice weather sticks around for a while…we are all really enjoying it!! 

Here are some extra pictures I took today as well…they don’t fit into the sequence but I don’t want to leave them out

 

One sure sign of Spring is the appearance of very, very white little manlegs.  I just love them!

Nice socks, Matthew!!  Apparently this style is all the rage at the elementary school….

Ben is giving Pea advice about how to put on the helmet.  He’s good like that-

Lil’ Pea

…and Ben the man.