Hooray for spring!

In happy news, spring has finally arrived--in the form of summer.

When I was little, I always thought that the adage "April showers bring May flowers" was some kind of taunt. In Minnesota, April showers are promptly followed by April showers, then April snows, then April general cruddiness, then some rain that freezes on top of the almost-melted snow. May is when we finally start to get something that looks a little like spring. But this year, we seem to be having actual spring weather, and in April no less!

I swear it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was swearing about the new snow, replacing the snow that I had dared to dream was gone for good. And today, it was 75. Is that confusing for anyone else? I just yesterday finally removed the hat, mittens, and scarf from Zachary's backpack, trusting that there wouldn't be a snowstorm while he was at school, trapping him 2 blocks from home without adequate winter gear. And today it was uncomfortably warm with all the windows open (yes, I am a big baby when it comes to the weather, and I only have about a 2-degree comfort range). I also figured it was probably safe to take the paper snowflakes off the window, since they look kind of silly surrounded by green grass--though no more silly than the Halloween straw broom I still have hanging from the front door. At some point we're actually closer to the holiday next year, so I may as well leave them up.

So I told the kids yesterday that since it was getting to be real live spring, maybe we should make some construction paper flowers to replace the snowflakes we were taking down. And then we spent a mostly cheerful hour or so cutting, folding, gluing and coloring paper flowers. It was nice because: it killed some time, I could send day care kids home with concrete evidence that we did not just stare at one another or Baby Einstein all day, and because it reduced the number of pounds of construction paper in the house. (I couldn't help it. I found it at Sam's Club. Cheap construction paper! Must... purchase... it!)

That was yesterday. Today was the last day for one of the kids, so I decided to make cinnamon rolls. And as I was in the kitchen, mixing and rolling and rising, the kids were playing on and under the dining room table--a favorite pastime. And I should have been worried when Ezra and his friend came in and started apologizing. First Ezra said he was sorry he had ripped his paper flower. I told him it was fine, it was his, and it wasn't a bad thing if it tore. Then his friend said he was sorry he'd been playing with the scissors; I had left the safety scissors on the dining room table in case we decided to make more flowers today. Any idea where this is headed? So I told him never to play with scissors if I wasn't there, and I walked in to check on the situation. And there sat the other little boy in this particular trio, holding a pair of safety scissors in his hand, scraping them in a half circle over and over across the dining room table--the nice, wood dining room table that, I might add, predates me in my husband's life. I washed away the pile of sawdust and looked at the damage. It's not pretty. I tell them every day not to put their forks on the table (they like to drum) because it will scratch it. I sort of thought that "don't dig into the table repeatedly with safety scissors" was sort of implied. Clearly I was wrong.

Apparently there are wood crayons, some sort of wax markers, and Old English wood markers--or something. I Googled fixing a wood table and came up with a lot of possibilities. I think it's going to result in me wandering around Menard's until I find someone who can explain to me in the simplest possible terms how to fix this. Hopefully I can do that without altering my husband to the terrible thing that I allowed to happen to the table. I hate getting in trouble. I also hate the giant scratched quarter of the table. This is what I get for trying to celebrate spring--and make cinnamon rolls.