Every Day with Eli: March 15

Oh, goodness. It was so beautiful today! As soon as I saw the weather forecast (sunny and 80! In March!) I knew we needed to go to the Garden. But it was primary election day, and a preschool day for Daisy.

But 80 degrees!

So we went. First, though, we visited our polling place. I cast my vote in a desperate attempt to keep Trump from progressing any further, and the kids got to vote, too! Our polling places had ballot sheets for the kids, and they got to vote for President (Mickey Mouse by a landslide), Vice President (a split among Superman, Wonder Woman, and Harry Potter), and Secretary of Fun (Donald Duck), as well as a few key issues. It was great, and the kids were so engaged!

This is our mandatory-for-social-media post-voting selfie. I either need a selfie stick, or to up my selfie game, because it is hard to fit all four kids in a picture!

Then we dropped Daisy off at school, and, with a little bit of guilt, I took the other three to the Garden. Once we got there, though, I didn't feel guilty at all. We had the best time! We saw my dad right away, and since we only had just over an hour, we were focused about our visit. Our primary goal: feed the fish.

So we marched off to the Japanese Garden. On the way, this happened:

Caleb and Lily holding hands, as they ran to the fish. It melted my heart. He is such a good big brother!

Lily saw the pink tree up ahead and said, "Oooh! Is that tree pink?" When I affirmed that it was, indeed, pink, she said, "That make my heart happy!" When I offered to take her picture with the pink tree, the girl was nearly beside herself with joy.

Yes, Lily, the pink trees make my heart happy, too.

We made it to the bridge where we feed the fish, and I got Eli out of the stroller. He has always been to young to participate in the fish-feeding, but today I got a bag of food just for him.

He didn't really understand the concept of throwing the food into the water, and he tried to eat a few pieces, so I handled the throwing. But he was so interested in the fish and ducks and geese! I had to work to keep him from climbing up and through the bridge rails, but it was a lot of fun to see how engaged he was in the whole thing. I love the little ways he is growing up each day!

After the fish, we had to make our circuit back to the van. Lily was adamant that she wanted to push the BOB.

As you can imagine, it didn't go very well.

Lily wasn't dissuaded, and was quite peeved when I wouldn't let her push anymore.

Eventually we made it out of the Garden, and got to Daisy's preschool right on time for pickup. The kids begged me to take them to a park for a picnic, but since Eli needed a nap and I didn't have a lunch packed, we ended up having a front porch picnic.

They were very happy.

Once everyone was down for naps, Caleb and I worked on school. After math, we read a book about earthworms, then went out to the garden to dig in the dirt. We ended up getting the garden cleaned up for spring plantings, and sowed some lettuce and broccoli seeds.

Farmer Caleb was very serious about his work.

He dug up several worms in the process of preparing the garden, and after reading the book he was very concerned about their well-being. We returned most of the worms to the garden, but one special worm (named "Wormy Worm") went into the wheelbarrow, along with all the weeds and moss we dug up. When we were finished, Caleb wheeled everything over to our mulch/compost bed, and we introduced Wormy Worm to his new habitat.

Then Eli woke up, and he decided to be my garden helper, too.