Good Friday

It was sunny and beautiful yesterday. So we spent a lot of time outside.

- We went to the playground. Sometimes they like going to the little playground -- Kate calls it "baby playground" -- because for some reason nobody ever goes there. It's not as nice as Lyon's Park, but it's got most of the same stuff, plus you can use all of it because...well, because no one ever goes there.

They went down the slides, and went on the swings a little bit, but mostly Jack wanted to race. Now, it was 10 in the morning and neither Emily nor I felt a whole lot like running, but we did anyway. It's kind of funny that we let Jack win and he knows we let him win (he once referred to my fake running in slow motion style), but we do it anyway. We ran laps, from the playground to the swingset area, and back. Kate ran some, then stepped in soggy, damp grass, stopped, lifted her foot, looked at it, expressed some misgivings about the situation, then went back to running. Once she took a shortcut from the run and stepped into a hole up to her ankle. She didn't run quite as quickly after that.

Jack tried to teach me how to run. "No, Daddy. OK, we go, 'ready....set....go.' And on 'set,' you have to crouch down like this. OK, now Go! No, wait Daddy." So basically, I said, it's go after you've already started? "Right," he said. We did this for a little while.

I impressed Jack by trying to throw a plastic bottle away into a trash can using only my feet. I didn't want to use my hands because, you know, I don't know where that bottle has been. I was ultimately successful.

- We went home, had lunch, and I took Jack to Home Depot for a sink fitting. We got the racecar cart. He was very happy.

- While Kate was napping, I fixed the sink, while Jack kind of helped. Then Emily took him over to the girls' lemonade stand. Kate woke up, and I took her over to feed the ducks. We had a lot of bread and as we approached the water, Kate yelled, "Here, ducks! Here's your BREADDDDDDDD!" We threw bread in the water, piece by piece. Kate sometimes ate a little.

- Emily and Jack joined us at the duck pond. We walked around the water. Jack showed Kate the little flowers that you could pick up off the ground. We went to a little footbridge and Jack explained how he liked to go to one side, throw the flowers in the water, and run back to the other side to see the current carry them under the bridge. And so we did that.

- At home, we played in the backyard. More running and racing around. Some fun with the bubble machine. We gave Jack his new soccer ball -- it starts in a couple of weeks -- and he and I played a little. I lost. Soccer is a contact sport for Jack, in that if I have the ball he'll typically go for me rather than the ball, leaving me sprawled in the grass while he goes on to score. It's possible I take a dive in these matchups.

- We grilled burgers and had gin and tonics. Emily and I anyway. It felt like summer.