You're OUT!!

Thursday was the Annual Applebee's Summer Picnic. It was held at a park about ten minutes from where we live, and we had good weather for it. The park had a playground (with an ENORMOUS pile of mulch in the middle!!!), baseball diamond, volleyball area, and picnic area with grills all over. It was nicely wooded, and the kids were lucky enough to find a salamander and two frogs (more on the frogs later, if I can remember to get back to it.)

There was another couple there with an adorable little girl, almost three years old. We were all over at the playground equipment, watching the kids play and chatting. The little girl's father talked about how active she is, and how much she likes to move. He told us he is enrolling her in dance classes. Jeff responded, "We're enrolling Hannah in Anger Management classes."

The boys got to be pinch runners in the softball game, and apparently Hannah was the umpire, because she threw Jeff out of the game in true in-your-face umpire fashion. I don't think I've ever seen an umpire pull the crocodile tears card, though. Sheer genius. I think if more umps tried that, they wouldn't be so universally detested and maligned. "No, I'm NOT blind... the tears were blurring my vision!"

At the end of the evening, the kids had managed to hold on to one of the thumbprint-sized frogs they had found, and begged me to let them take him home. Okay, so we make it home with Kermit intact, but the kids were covered from head to toe in -- naturally -- mulch. They needed to be hosed off and bathed, pronto. I don't know what I was thinking, but they managed to talk me into letting them take a cool bath so that Kermit could join them. Yup. That little bugger was really a great swimmer, but after such an exciting evening, he really just preferred to hang out on dry hand.

The kids all learned a bunch that day about tadpoles, frogs, and amphibians in general. Before bedtime, we released Kermit into our backyard, as I explained to the kids that some animals simply cannot survive away from their natural habitat. I answered a lot of questions about frogs that evening, and discovered that "because he's a frog" is a perfectly acceptable answer to most of those questions.

I wonder if this is how it all started for Lois Lane? If you haven't read her blog, Home Fires, you are missing some really good stuff. Thanks to my good friend Z for helping me link her in this post!