There's Always an Upside

OK, so I am a bad blogger. Gah. I was kind of sick most of last week and too weak to blog. I'm feeling much better now and I promise I will try to do better. Promising to try is much easier than actually trying, you know.

We are in the middle of birthday season over here. Hannah turned 5 on Tuesday (I did start a blog entry about that and Blogger ate it) and most of her friends have either had birthdays in the last month or have birthdays in the next few weeks. Today, we celebrated the birthday of her great friend Ian. Sara (Ian's mom) and I met when we were pregnant. Hannah and Ian have been playmates since, well, before they were old enough to realize they were playmates. They now attend the same preschool.

It was a delightful birthday party at the university's Natural History Museum. I enjoyed seeing the children (most of them school friends and assorted siblings) in a setting that is much closer to school than home. There was a presentation on amphibians and reptiles: snakeskins to touch, empty turtle shells and live animals to pet very carefully. Hannah raises her hand when she wants to say something in the group (the only one at that--I couldn't be more proud!).

One fascinating activity was the archeologist tub. It's full of blocks of chalky plaster with all kinds of shells and neat rocks and bits of bone that the kids can uncover and excavate with small picks. There are small paint brushes, too, for sweeping the dust off the specimens. Seriously though, there's no time to sweep when you can be hacking out fossils with a pick! (I was sure someone was going to loose a finger in all the enthusiastic hacking.) Being care-free, not-very-conscientious archeologists kept a small group of about 5 children busy for a long time. Right after I told Hannah that we would be leaving in 5 minutes, I overheard the following exchange between her and one of her friends.

H: We can probably come back and work on this again some time soon.
O: Unless we die.
H: Yeah, then we'd never get to come back here.
O: Because when you're dead, you don't get to go places. You're just in the cemetery.
H: But we'd have headstones!

Brightened my day.