Happy Spring Solstice! Winter is on its way out the door at long last. I looked up the ubiquitous egg balancing trick which we have successfully tried on other Spring and Autumn Solstices, only to find out we've been tricked, bamboozled, duped. Philip C. Plait claims roughly 130 million Americans have heard of or tried this trick, so we're in good company.
Our favorite myth busters, Snopes, agree the magical, egg balancing, alignment properties of March 20th are a legend. Though they give it a yin yang kind of metaphorical balancing twist I find symbolically appealing. This year I think we'll forgo the upended egg farce and go climb a newly budding tree instead!
This weekend, we are again heading for the Windy City Roller Derby, on Sagezilla's poster winning tickets. This time, we're bringing a crowd of 56 with us under the name, Sheik Yerbouti's Harem! The bout is Sat. night from 6-9:30pm at UIC Pavillion. The kids are ecstatic.
Sunday we'll be at Northpark Nature Center for the eagerly anticipated annual Maple Syrup Festival. The kids love to taste sap right out of the tree and sip cups of hot, fresh syrup directly off of the wood fires, where it's boiled down to its concentrated form. OK, I'll admit it, the adults dig it, too. I love the smell of a campfire offset by the sweet scent of sappy goodness. We know it's spring when we can eat an outdoor pancake breakfast in the woods!
Du, Zilla, and their friend, Ella, enjoyed a 72 degree taste of things to come, under the still bare willow tree, on St. Patrick's day.
We had our car windows open for the first time in half a year. When we passed at least 20 people biking, on our way to school, I couldn't help belting out the Queen song, Bicycle Race and the kids took to it like urban pigeons to an underpass. Later in the day, I found the iPod and burned Queen's Greatest Hits to disc for them, so they could hear Freddy Mercury do Bicycle Race justice, instead of just lyric impaired, Mom.
The Youtube vid linked above, is a fun collage set to the original song, since the unedited Queen video features naked bikers. Not that you can see much, or that we're opposed to birthday suits, but I'll leave showing that one to the kidlets to individual parents' discretion. The most kid- inappropriate thing in the link I posted is a couple of characters flashing "the finger". It still might not be what you want your preschooler demonstrating for show n tell. But the song rocks, nonetheless. Here is another excellent G rated version of Bicycle Race.
By dinner time, they taught it to their friend, and the madness spread. When we drove Ella home, all 3 kids got the biggest kick out of belting out BICYCLE....BICYCLE............I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE........I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE...........at top volume out the open car windows. I had to explain to Ella's Mom that I inadvertently created a 3 headed, lyric screaming, back-seat-riding monster. But the kids made a whole lotta bike riders smile, laugh and wave.
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