The Return of the Picnic!

Glorious! It's the only word to describe the feeling of SPRING! After a winter in Denmark, I think that my favorite season may have just switched from Autumn to Spring! Jared has been busy assembling lawn furniture... as you can see, Ruby was a big help handing Daddy the tools when he was ready to use them. Jared said that in her "off-time" she was banging the wrench on all the nuts--at least she figured out that the wrench and nuts belong together, even if she didn't get the methodology down quite right.

We were able to have our first family picnic of the year and Ruby loved it! She had a whole hotdog (with skin cut off and cut up--don't panic!!) and almost a whole cheeseburger, along with a few tomato slices and melon! This was after her appetizer of... dirt. It's hard to really see in the picture, but she had just filled her mouth with a hefty handfull of mud and acted as if everything were perfectly normal. I used her natural tendancy to spit liquid out to my favor this time and poured water into her mouth for her to swish it out and she was clear in no time. These things will happen!

While Jared was cooking (and Ruby was eating dirt) I got a picture of our tadpole eggs for you. If you click on the picture you'll be able to see a bigger view and check out their nifty little bodies and tails. When I took this shot, a lot of the eggs were already empty. Sadly, it will now be pretty hard to see the little guys because (in my opinion) our pond is pretty grimy. We may get a tiny aquarium and bring a few inside though... we'll have to see what I can do about that little project this weekend. Jared brought a bunch of eggs to our pastor's family (with five young boys) and they are really enjoying watching them grow in the aquarium. Since they are warmer and inside, they seem to be growing faster than our pond 'poles.

Ruby was able to top off her barbecue dinner with a leftover chocolate cupcake from her birthday party. Like I said in an earlier post, the girl loves her sweets! The nice thing about eating outdoors, we found, was that we could just brush all the zillions of crumbs onto the ground. That way we're happy and the birds are happier.

Happy grilling!