Ah, Spring (sortof)

Spring here is here.  Well, sort of.  If you were to judge things by Clara's clothing, you would think it truly had arrived. She's been wearing summer clothing for the last few days, despite the fact that the temperature has barely topped 40.  Here she was yesterday, soaking up the sun, and swearing to me that she was "boiling!"

The cats also had their first venture outside for the year.

New England Aquarium

We went to the aquarium for the first time in years.  Linda and Roger joined us, and we had a great time.  The aquarium has undergone some changes in the last several years.  We had been there once since they added the outdoors area for the sea lions and fur seals, but the shark and ray touch tank was new.


We spent a long time there, reaching down to feel the rays as they swam past, and feeling the sandpaper-like skin of the tiger sharks.   I especially loved the Leopard Whiptail Ray pictured below.  It was huge!












There was one small ray that acted a lot like a dog, returning again and again to be petted.  It would swim away bit, and then come back and nuzzle up against your hand.  The girls were enamored with it.

We also spent a fair amount of time just looking at the colorful fish in the coral reef exhibit.  I especially loved the lion fish.














We walked over to Flour Bakery and Cafe for lunch (mmmm...delicious!!!), and then went back to see the IMAX movie on Humpbacks in 3D.  It was fabulous, with fantastic scenes of humpbacks coordinating together to hunt small fish.

In Jail

We're tough around here. 

We don't even allow Tiger in for a visit.

Knitting as a Winter Sport

Leopard Girls

This week is February vacation week, and Clara chose to attend Winter Wol's Nest at the Harris Center.  This left Lee and me home together for a good chunk of the day.  She has some work to do for her CTY course, and Lila is also around this week, so there was no need to entertain her, but today I planned for just the two of us to have an outing together.  I thought we'd go to Nashua, stop at Mother and Child for some clothes, restock some TJ necessities, and top it off with a movie at Chunky's.  

We had a great day.  I was so touched when Lee told me she couldn't eat much breakfast because she was so excited for the day.  We first stopped at A&E Coffee Roasters, had a hot drink and picked out some interesting teas (Toothless Tiger Chai for me, Very Berry for Lee, and Green Mango for Clara).  Then we scored big at Mother and Child.  Lee found several shirts, some pants, a long velvety black skirt, and some hiking boots for the summer.

But the big find was this leopard skin jacket.  And, she found this leopard skin vest for Clara.

"Mom, we have to get this for Clara," she said.

Lee was so excited to give the vest to Clara when she got home from camp.

Clara loved it, and is actually sleeping with it spread out on her pillow right now, so Lee was right on.





The movie was fun too.  Lee is definitely moving beyond kids movies (although not the better ones that most of us enjoy our entire lives), and so we watched McFarland USA, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Stomach Bug

The kids each had a brief stomach bug this week.   They were both troopers about it and bounced back really quickly.  Lee's timing was ideal, as she was hit after breakfast and pretty much recovered by evening.  Clara, however, came down with it at midnight, and so we had a long and interrupted night which included a fair amount of cleaning up.  She was so sweet, though, and kept saying how much she loved us and how grateful she was that we got up in the middle of the night to take care of her.  Then she wrote us this card:

What a sweet, sweet kid she is.  Now if only I could convince her to give two hoots about spelling.  ;-)

Knick Knacks

For Christmas I found Clara an old type-set tray from an antique store.  I kind of wondered what she would ever put in it and how long it would take her to fill it.  I needn't have worried.