in like a lion

March already! March, finally! This weekend was really nice, temperature-wise. Despite all the snow that's still lingering out in the yard, it was warm enough to spend a lot of time outside. We started Saturday morning by going out and shoveling some snow, an activity that the boys are inexplicably fond of.



Later in the morning, we took a nice drive to South Bend to run a bunch of errands and eat at Chipotle. The boys were in heaven with their cheese quesadillas and lemonade!

Sunday morning, Liam and Max headed out with Mike to the hardware store, where they bought, among other things, seed packets for green beans and watermelons. Perhaps it's a little early in the season yet to think about planting, but there's a definite change in the air that suggests this long winter may be coming to an end. After the hardware store, they took advantage of the warm weather to head to the park, much to the delight of two little boys who are tired of being cooped up in the house.





In the afternoon, Liam and I took on the big job of cleaning out the garage. We assembled a couple of sets of shelves (purchased the day before on our shopping errands) and loaded them up. It really makes a big difference in there to have things stored neatly and organized. We'll be doubly glad once it gets warm enough to start some outdoor projects. After a couple of hours, Max joined us outside, and the boys had a blast riding their bikes on the sidewalk and loading up what's left of the snow into their sand buckets (which we unearthed in the great garage clean-up).



In other news, last week I spent the whole week subbing for a kindergarten class. Oh, the tantrums! The bickering! The incessant questioning of what I was doing and why I would dare not to do it exactly as their regular teacher does! For the coming week, I'm already signed up for three days of subbing -- two days of high-school English, and one day of first grade. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that the high-school days will prove to be just as challenging as kindergarten, just in a more subtle way. On the plus side, a couple of the teachers asked me if I had a teaching license, and were surprised that I don't, because they said I did really well in the classroom. I'm still not sure I have the right temperament to be a teacher full-time, but it was definitely nice to have some positive reinforcement.

All in all, I have to say that March has gotten off to a good start. We had a nice warm weekend, and plenty of time together as a family, which seems a commodity in short supply these days. What more could I ask for?