Joys of Spring

Oh, my, how great it is to see the sun after so many months of dismal grey and cold! Another beautiful spring day had us outside all afternoon. I promised Jack way back around Christmas that when it was warm again, we'd start teaching him how to ride a "real" bike. Today was the day! We've taken the pedals off so he can start learning to get his balance without having to worry about pedaling also. His first try was a disaster, down he went and it almost put him off the whole idea. But, Daddy and I told him that was just the way it goes, adjusted his seat a little bit, and he was ready to try again. He had a great time padding around the circle, then asked me to push him so that the could go faster. Normally he's got a great sense of balance, but the bike has really thrown him off, so we'll see how long it take to get the hang of things. Poor guy would really quite like to keep riding his (admittedly awesome) huge blue tricycle, but even I have my limits of ego. Five and riding a tricycle round the neighborhood with his mom, oh no!

While tooling around the cul de sac, Jack spotted this huge clump of ants on the ground in our neighbor's driveway. On close inspection, it turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of ants all clustered together, mostly paired off facing each other with antennae wiggling like mad. Seemed to me maybe they were battling each other? Or perhaps some had suffered some horrible accident (given the location, I'm thinking they got squashed by a car?) and the others had come to cart them off to ant hospital. I asked Jack what he thought was going on. He said "I think maybe they are having a parade!" Far nicer way to think of it! I didn't have the heart to point out that they weren't actually making any progress anywhere. Our friendly neighborhood (well, not really, he lives in California) scientist-uncle has been consulted and we'll try to get back to you with an answer to this ant mystery.