A Superhero Birthday!

Joseph loves Superman and superheroes in general. (Except Buzz Lightyear. Hard to believe, but it's true . . . he has said multiple times that he's not cool anymore.) So it was pretty easy to pick a theme for his birthday party.

I've typically been someone who's shied away from elaborate birthday plans, at least in theory (though I had no track record of simple parties since this was the first I'd ever thrown). I knew all along that all Joseph wanted was a Superman cake and presents from his friends. But then as I started planning the games, food, and decorations I had a lot of fun, so it ended up being a little more elaborate than what I would have guessed a month ago. I was able to keep to my rule that I wasn't allowed to do anything that I didn't really want to do, which is why the kids didn't get any party favors (more on that later).

Anyway, here's what I did!

Decorations

While Kevin and Joseph were at a Father/Son campout, I pulled up "Once I was a Beehive" and watched it while making a Superman cityscape. Hooray for construction paper and glue sticks!

They also came in handy for some birthday banners.

And of course, the streamers from my birthday were still up. Because we never take decorations down as a rule.

We also had some of these again since Joseph remembered them from last year.

Food

I hadn't wanted to feed people lunch/snacks, but as I thought about it I decided it would be more fun than hard.

Isn't the Internet great?

(Most of these came from Google, but I did come up with the laser vision carrots by myself. Unsurprisingly, they were not a success.)

Cake

As promised, I made a Superman cake. Actually 2 of them.

Turns out . . . I threw two parties. We are just so blessed to have so many fun kids all born the exact same year as Joseph, plus a few more the year before or after, that I ended up inviting almost 20 kids (with all but 4 showing up). And that requires two parties. (And even then, there were a few more who I wanted but I would start panicking about the thought of more kids and have to tell myself no. There's a point where the difficulty in inviting more children stops being logarithmic and starts being exponential, to put it in math terms.)

So yeah. 2 cakes. And then I worried that there wouldn't be enough cake, especially if some parents stuck around, so we had some backup cupcakes too.

Inside each cake was a layer of yellow cake (with a tiny bit of rainbow added from food coloring I threw in) and a layer of chocolate cake.

Costumes

Joseph has wanted a cape ever since he watched Incredibles (which seems backwards, but whatever), and we've usually just tied a blanket around. But for his birthday I decided to make a real one.

To make it, I cut the sleeves and front off of a medium T-shirt, added velcro to the collar, and voila!

Sorry . . . this is the best picture I've taken of it so far

To make a mask, I traced two pieces of felt, cut them out, and sewed a piece of elastic in between. Simple, right?

In theory, yes. But after a little bit of trouble with my sewing machine I ended up only making 4 masks. There was just no point, I decided.

But hey! Traced pieces of felt make great party favors for the moms!

Games

One tricky part about having two parties is planning for different weather throughout the day. The day before, there was a 50% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon . . . which meant I had to be prepared for anything! By the day of the party, I had a pretty good list of both indoor and outdoor games.

For Party 1, we started off with an obstacle course outside. They had to put on a cape and mask, jump from chalk circle to chalk circle to avoid hot lava, run on some zigzags, run through some trees, and then go through a tunnel made out of a cardboard box.

To be honest, it was a little bit of chaos. My friend described it as herding bumblebees. It was hard for them to wait in line, and when I added more chalk and more tunnels to make it go two at a time they just got more confused. But I think they still had fun.

We then had another relay race where the kids had to carry water from a bowl to some water bottles. The team that filled the water bottle first got to run over to the chalk fire and extinguish it. Again, the concept of racing seemed a little beyond them, as did waiting in line, so the kids who were interested kept at it and the kids who weren't found sticks and acorns to play with. No worries. When one of the water bottles was full (enough), we all took turns pouring the water on the chalk and ultimately grabbed the big bowl of water to douse it completely. By then it was 80 something degrees, sunny, and humid, so we were all glad to go back inside. I didn't think they would concentrate any more, so we just opened presents and had cake. And then it was time to be done!

Between the two parties, I cleaned a little, checked the guest list again, panicked when I realized I hadn't done a very good job of making sure other adults would be there, and read some Beezus and Ramona to psych myself up for the impending doom. (It turned out there were 2 adults there most of the time, and one of them took care of Matthew so I didn't have to. Phew!)

For Party 2 . . . well, it started a bit early since all but one of the kids were neighbor boys who play in our basement pretty often. (I have probably made it sound like they always hang out here all the time, but I think there's at least one house they frequent a lot more often, and 1-2 more that they play at a lot too. So it's a good system.) When 3:00 hit, they came upstairs for the party.

This time I started with an indoor game, even though the thunderstorm never materialized. I turned on some superhero theme songs and had them dance. When the music stopped, they all had to freeze except the designated superhero, who crawled through their legs to free them. He would pass the cape and mask on to the next kid, and we'd do another round. Some of them decided instead of dancing to find the other 3 masks that I'd made but hadn't found a use for, so before I knew it they were basically all superheroes rescuing each other and not doing very much dancing. No worries.

Then we went out and did the obstacle course.  In contrast to the first party, there was no difficulty getting them to do the course. Around and around and around they all went in a line of 7 boys. Across the chalk rocks! Along the zigzag! Through the tunnel! And again! I lost track of how many times they did it. After a few minutes they petered out and started to scatter. Time for the next activity!

The fire-extinguishing water bottle game went pretty well again, though it also seemed to go pretty fast. When I went inside I was shocked at how early it still was. Joseph opened presents lickety split, and it had barely been a half hour since the party started. Time for more games!

They didn't seem that interested in Hot Potato Kryponite (using a piece of crumpled up tin foil), so that lasted for maybe 3 minutes. Welp, I thought, time for cake and snacks. Once all of that was done, the party had only lasted an hour. There was still no sign of rain, so I said, "The rest of the party is a water party!" So they all ran back to their houses and put on their swim shorts and played with a hose for the rest of the afternoon. Really, that's probably what they wanted all along.

When all was said and done, we were left with basically two halves of the two cakes, nearly two dozen cupcakes, a lot of rice kryptonite treats, and a whole lot more presents than I was expecting since I put "no presents" on the invitation (edit: it only made it onto one invitation! Oops!). So, wins all around, right?

And Joseph was happy. So that's what matters most.

We sure like him.

To be a friend

Last Friday, Kevin and I put our kids to bed and then headed off to the temple. We were going because it had been a little while, but we were also going to decide for sure about Kevin's postdoc.

To tell the truth, I've known in my heart for a long time that we were going to move, so I wasn't going to ask about that. Instead, I went with this question: "What more do we need to do in Ann Arbor?"

I wasn't expecting a big, life-changing answer -- for instance, it's hard to start a nonprofit in just three months. And I didn't really get one. Instead, the impression that has stuck with me is to "be a friend."

Although that should be an obvious thing to do, in some ways it was sort of hard to do this week. Kevin had a paper due today that he didn't have all the theory worked out for, so he spent most of the week working on it til past 1 or 2 in the morning. It usually took Matthew somewhere between 1-3 hours to actually fall asleep for naps once he showed signs of being tired (although driving sped up the process exponentially), and he averaged about 40 minutes of napping each day. Joseph was mostly fine, but there were plenty of meltdowns. And so on.

And on top of that came the instruction to "be a friend."

I had two types of experiences with that each week. One was to be friendly to people I hadn't met before, and the other was to be a friend to friends I already know.

For the past little while, I've generally been able to breeze through week after week without having to talk to people I don't know. Every now and then someone new moves in, but for the most part I've just been able to talk to people I already know. But this week was different. I counted 8 different instances involving more than a dozen people I didn't know where the only polite thing to do was to talk to them.

Some people thrive on that. I've had times where I've thrived on that (freshman year of college, for example). But this week was definitely not one of those times. It felt like someone threw a backpack on me, dumped it full of rocks and said, "Here. Go climb a mountain." Or more accurately, it's like someone squirted an entire tube of toothpaste in my mouth and said, "Go say something intelligent now." Then there was the time there was an intentional language barrier thrown in, and I felt so dense I couldn't even understand what my friend speaking perfect English was saying.

Sure, you can always talk about the weather and where people are from, but once you've belabored that it can be exhausting to think about what to talk about next. Even with all the practice I had this week, each time filled me with trepidation. When Kevin said, "Maybe you can view it as a service," that made it even worse! Service should be fixing up yards and bringing meals. It shouldn't be doing people a favor by gracing them with your glorious presence and making conversation with them. If I thought of conversation as service, then it would become a chore more tedious than weeding or sweeping the front porch.

Well, I thought, this doesn't bode well for our upcoming move to a place where I know absolutely no one! Is this what it means to "be a friend?"

Luckily, I also had lots of conversations with most of my close friends. These conversations were not stilted and awkward. There were inside jokes and allusions to experiences together. We already knew what was going on in each other's lives. I don't think I ever did anything to serve them such as watching kids or making treats, so did I fail that aspect of "be a friend"?

I don't think so. True, I never actively served them, but I think it's actually a good thing that it didn't feel like service to talk to them! And therein was my epiphany of the week. There are really only two ways to see people -- as an object or a friend. Even if you try to put a positive spin on it by thinking of them as "someone to serve," then they are still objects in your mind. And it's really, really tiring to keep on giving to objects.

The tricky thing for me is that I feel like in order to transform someone from an object to a friend in my mind is to need them. It's when I feel like I need them in my life -- whether to text me Parent Trap quotes or discuss literature or laugh at my jokes -- that I'm willing to open up my heart and change them from project to friend.

But that's not what friendship is about, either! Friendships based on "what can I get from them" seem pretty mercenary, to be honest. But friendships without at least a bit of quid pro quo seem exploitative and exhausting. So what are we supposed to do?

I guess the most wisdom I've gained from this is from listening to Charlotte's Web in the car the past few weeks. I've read the book multiple times, but man, listening to E. B. White read it himself in his delightfully old-fashioned accent is incredible. It's also been surprisingly emotional for me. When I think of sweet, innocent Wilbur, basking in the love of Fern and Charlotte without doing a thing to deserve it, I almost get teary-eyed right there in the car. They just love him because they want to love him, and that makes him worthy of their love.

And perhaps that is the answer. Perhaps we will find out we need people when we love them first. Perhaps we will discover they are fun and friendly and witty and dependable when we see them that way. I know that's been the case this week . . . I've somehow been blessed to hang out with people who see me as kind, so I've had to live up to it even though I've wanted to be grumpy. Did I deserve to be seen so positively? Hardly. Have I been changed by it? Yes, even if a bit begrudgingly. (Kevin's heard plenty of grumbling.)

So, I guess the command to "be a friend" isn't about having a litany of well-placed conversation starters with the grandma at the park or even about fulfilling every need a friend might have. I guess it's more about having an outlook of love so that we don't see people as objects that we have to converse with or serve but rather children of God who deserve respect.

I guess it's time to move to a new city so I can practice this more.

(All this said, I still think I want to hunker down and not talk to anyone except Kevin for a few days. And that's probably okay, right?)

Mini Adventures, Part 2

Here are a few more little stories of life these days.

Birthday Adventures

For my birthday, what I wanted was cake and games with friends one night and dinner at a restaurant the next.

That's basically what I got, but sandwiched between when I first voiced my desires and when they actually occurred was a whole slew of things. Graduation was that same weekend, and that both brought friends to town and cut down on available babysitters. I tried to take initiative in planning a potluck a different day and temporarily found myself in charge of a ward party on my birthday. It got canceled, but the potluck moved around a few times and ended up on my birthday, which also made babysitters hard. Graduation also affected where we got to go to dinner, though Kevin decided to call just in case, so we made it into the Chop House. With cross-country party planning and attempt after attempt to get someone to watch our kids while we went to Chop House, I spent a good chunk of the week frazzled. Why was this so hard? Even my tradition of vacuuming the car at the church the day before my birthday didn't quite go as planned since there were people with chainsaws cutting down branches of a nearby tree, and tree debris blew into the car until I realized what was happening.


Then there was the cake. I decided to make the same cake I had made two years earlier. I remembered there was something I would have changed about it, but I figured that that was because I had used cocoa powder and butter instead of baking chocolate. I compared it with other brownie torte recipes and decided to stick with the recipe as written. I couldn't make up my mind as to which sort of filling I wanted, so I decided to make chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla fillings.

Neapolitan cake

I also couldn't decide what sort of candy I wanted on the top.

As I took my first bite of the cake, it was a bit drier than I anticipated. "I may as well have made straight brownies instead of going to all the work to make this brownie torte," I thought. Then I remembered that I had uttered those exact words two years ago. Why had I made the same mediocre cake twice??? Oh well. It aged well, and it was still delicious with ice cream.

And I got more than enough cake the next few days. On my actual birthday I went to Joseph's friend's birthday party and got a slice of Batman cake. Then I went to another of Joseph's friend's birthday parties and got some blueberry ice cream. And then the next day we went to another party where we made Claude Shannon birthday cake. (I was done with cake by that point. It was just a box cake anyway, nothing special except the entropy equation.)

I fixed the minus sign, Dad

Pizza Adventures

I still haven't figured out how to make pizza. I have tried and tried and tried and Kevin almost always says it's fine, but I always find something wrong -- it's too bready or too thin or too soft. And always, always, it's too floppy. I want pizza with a firm enough crust on the bottom that you can hold it without flopping down.

I've asked several friends what their secret is, and the answer is always the same -- slide the pizza directly onto the hot pizza stone. I always resisted, but this time I was willing to give it a shot. I made the pizza on the underside of a skillet over a generous layer of cornmeal. Once it was made, I carefully began to slide it onto the pizza stone. But despite all the cornmeal, some of the pizza was sticking to the pan, so I had to grab a spatula to pry it off. Carefully, carefully, carefully . . .and then half the pizza landed pepperoni side down on the pizza stone.

I immediately began scooping the cheese and pepperoni out from under the crust as best I could and then decided there was nothing more I could do over a 500 degree oven. It sort of looked like a reverse calzone being folded like that.

When it was done, I was almost tempted to take a picture of it. But I was so disappointed I couldn't even do that, even though it was pretty funny. The cheese and the sauce had mixed together in a strange way that made it seem like there wasn't any cheese. And all the pepperoni had somehow combined in stacks so that you got pieces with no pepperoni or pieces with three on top of each other (but you didn't think to separate them until it was too late).

But. The crust was not floppy. It was almost perfect, even though it was folded on top of itself. So I guess it was a success.

Chores

I'm going to end this with a real success. At least, I feel like this was a real success. The other day I decided to sweep the porch. Then later that day (or another day soon after) Joseph and I weeded our little garden, and his friends came by. They liked the idea of weeding, so they got to work. The only tricky part was catching them before they picked actual plants.

Then Tuesday afternoon, Joseph invited a friend P. over. While he was coming in, another friend J. walked from his house across the sidewalk and invited himself over to play too. When they had been downstairs for a few minutes, I got a knock on our door from a few other friends -- F. L., and S. (brothers of E.D. and J.L.).

L told me, "I've got a huge, long list of chores I need to get done while my mom is napping. Can Joseph come help?" I suggested the idea, and all the boys came running up to go do his chores. I don't think the chores lasted too long because when I checked out the window a minute later they were all at the sandbox.

The next hour or so was a blur of me trying to get Matthew down for a nap (it never worked . . . he slept a grand total of 30 minutes that day, same as today), watching those 6 boys run in and out of my house (although S. was inclined to stay and play when everyone else had left), listening to them play with cars, feeding them popcorn, and then finally eagerly handing off the responsibility of keeping an eye on Joseph and P. when P.'s mom came and offered to do so. I then tried to make pita bread one-handed, since that's the only way Matthew could handle. (I guess we could add those to my latest cooking "triumphs"  . . . first time I made them that they didn't puff up.)

So, crazy, chaotic afternoon. Where is the success story? Well, when I was letting the pita bread rise, I  went outside and asked my friend if L. ever finished his chores. It turns out he hadn't had any chores and had made the whole thing up. He was running by at the time so she asked him what chores he had done.

"We weeded our plants and swept the front porch."

Guys. I was a good example in the world! (I mean, he was the one who thought of it, but I will gladly take the credit for planting the idea in his head.)

Cakes and pizzas and little boys. Life is basically one long birthday party and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Mini Adventures, Part 1

Life has been going along pretty well for us. We know where we're living next year. Kevin stays busy with papers and research, and I stay busy keeping the house together while he's at work. Nothing too exciting.

But somehow adventure always finds us. Luckily, they're usually small adventures. None of them merit an entire blog post, but here are a few little vignettes of the funny parts of life.

The Lurie Building

Three years ago, Kevin told me about a building on North Campus with the most beautiful pink blossoms. The next year, we looked forward to seeing them again, but the winter had been so cold they didn't bloom. The next year (last year), we were in Utah when they were blooming, so my friend Michelle took pictures of them for me so I wouldn't miss them entirely.

This year, though, there were no obstacles to me seeing them in their full glory. One Friday morning, I told Kevin I would drive him to campus and then swing by the Lurie Building to see the trees. Right before his building, there was a huge truck that seemed like it was reversing into a garage but was currently stopped in the middle of the road. We were stopped. The car in front of us was stopped. The bus in front of us was stopped. We had no clue what to do.

Eventually, the bus moved over to the other side of the road, and the rest of us followed. But those few minutes of waiting had slightly soured the experience for me, and the trees were not quite as beautiful because of it.

I was determined to see them again (especially since they hadn't fully bloomed yet) so the next Monday I stopped by again on my way back from a museum. This time, a really fancy SUV had pulled up right before I got there and opened all the doors. Some older people stepped out, and some really fancily dressed escorts began pulling wheelchairs out of the trunk for them so they wouldn't have to do much walking once in the building.

I sat there watching for a minute . . . and then another minute . . . and then another minute. I'm here to enjoy the trees! I reminded myself, and glanced occasionally at the beautiful trees bursting with cotton candy pink blossoms. But then I'd look back at that fancy SUV. Why had they left a door open on the driver's side? Could I get past it? Could I reverse out of the circle driveway? Would they be offended and decide to not give their million-dollar donations to the university if I asked if they would please close that door? Eventually I got up my courage and started scooting past. They noticed me moving at a snail's pace, but instead of going to close the door someone just nodded to indicate that there was room. Well, there might have been room, but I wasn't willing to risk hitting that SUV. So I ended up on the curb a little bit, but I made it past. Again, those blossoming trees weren't worth the effort. And I didn't even get a picture in all that time! (Maybe I don't want one since it will trigger too many awkward memories.)

Chipmunks

Kevin got home late that same afternoon. When he came in, I said, "Could you close the door quickly behind you?" He was about to, but there was a little neighbor boy trying to walk in.

"Is the chipmunk still here?"

Kevin immediately understood my request to close the door and I explained what happened.

Joseph and his friends had decided to explore the woods near our house. I was sitting outside talking to friends when he came back to the house nearly sobbing. "Let's go home!" he cried.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't want the witch to get me!"

The boys had apparently convinced themselves (or at least him) that there were witches/bears in the woods. I tried to convince him to go in with me so he wouldn't hold onto a fear of them, but he refused. So into the house we went. I told him that witches weren't real, and that even if they were real they'd be afraid of little boys. Bears were real, but there weren't any in our woods. He had lots of questions about who would be scared of whom and why wouldn't they be scared of little boys or grownups, and I calmly answered them all as I moved the laundry along. Then I went upstairs and stopped midsentence with a yelp. There was a chipmunk in my house! It scurried into the closet and then under the dishwasher. I swung the door open and grabbed one of Joseph's sticks in his porch collection to try to prod it out. No luck.

I rehearsed the Family Proclamation in my head. Whose job was it to preside, provide, and protect? Not mine! And Kevin was still on campus! So I hurried over to my neighbor's house and asked how he felt about getting rid of a chipmunk. He obliged and grabbed his broom. He poked under the dishwasher, but there was no sign of it. Not under the piano, not under the couch, not in the closet. It didn't seem like it could have fit under the door to the basement, so we just assumed it went back outside. He found a chipmunk right outside my door right after that, so that was a good sign.

Even so, I felt a little uneasy that night since I never saw the chipmunk leave the house. (I felt almost as uneasy when I thought about how long that chipmunk might have been in there. Had it come in a few hours earlier when Joseph had left the door open for a few minutes, or had it snuck in the same time as us? Neither made me feel very good.) Each time there was an opportunity to go to the basement, I invited Kevin to go in my place in the off chance that it had somehow made it down there. Out of curiosity we got our stuffed animal chipmunk out and started leaving it around to see if the other of us would get startled, but it never worked.

Given that it's been more than a week, we've seen a chipmunk run into a neighbor's house (presumably the same brazen little guy), and we don't smell dead chipmunk (which we have smelled before in our dryer vent), I think we're safe. But I always keep the door closed.

(Funny side note . . . Joseph loves his Snow White books right now. But it seems like the combination of scary woods, witches, and indoor chipmunks would not be a good hit at our house.)

Well, it looks like these mini adventures have become longer than expected. But don't worry. There are more to share. It's how we roll.

The Best is Yet to Be

As Matthew has become more mobile, it's been tempting to compare him to Joseph at the same age and peg him as "busier."

But this is why I keep a blog. A quick glance at what I wrote about Joseph at the same age suggests that Matthew is no busier than Joseph was.

It's interesting though . . . it can be so tempting to make narratives for ourselves that aren't really that accurate. They also usually make our present situation seem harder than it really is. Here are a few examples that I've thought of the past few days.

• At Matthew's 2 month appointment, he showed off for the doctor. He was friendly and wiggly and even rolled over for her. "I think he's going to be a lot busier than Joseph was," she warned me. What she didn't know is that at Joseph's 2 month appointment, he kicked the butcher paper so violently that it crumpled and tore, and he could roll over too.  But has he been destructive and hyper ever since? Hardly. A few minutes in a doctor's office isn't really a sufficient data point.
• I also assumed that Matthew was a lot bigger than Joseph. But Joseph was 16 pounds at 6 months and Matthew was 16.5. At 9 months, Joseph was 17 lbs and Matthew was 18 lbs. So he's bigger, but not by a ton.
• Joseph is picky. There is no doubt about it. It's been exasperating to watch foods disappear from his diet for no apparent reason (the latest loss is bananas, but blueberries, grapes, peas, and broccoli have all disappeared too). I've longed for the days when he wasn't so picky . . . but those are actually imaginary days. As I wrote when he was 17 months old,
  "Chicken might be okay one meal, but definitely not the next. The same goes for bread, strawberries, peas, milk, and basically every other food he eats. When you look at acceptable foods over time, the graph resembles white noise, a random signal. " 
  I think he was willing to eat more foods back then, but he still could be particular. So, I don't need to mourn the loss of what never was.
• I've always heard that I was a big, difficult baby. But I recently looked at my medical history, and at 8 months I was 19 pounds. Which is not small necessarily, but at 18 pounds Matthew is well below the 50th percentile. (I know I'm comparing boys to girls and 9 months to 8 months. But still.) Compared to the 4 month and 22 lb or 11 month and 27 lb babies I'm used to hearing about, 19 pounds seems relatively tiny!
  One of the evidences often cited by my aunts and uncles that I was difficult was that it was hard to change my diaper since I wanted to roll over. After having two kids and babysitting lots of others, my response to that is, "Really? What baby doesn't want to roll over during a diaper change?" Or, "What baby doesn't have at least some separation anxiety?" I'm not really qualified to speak definitively on this since I don't remember it, but it has been interesting to think about. 
• We are all looking forward to Joseph turning 4, especially because it means he won't be 3 anymore. 3 has been the hardest, whiniest, sassiest, most difficult age ever . . . except for when he was 2. Or 1. Or a baby. One thing that actually helped me through the past few months of Joseph being 3 was reading about when he was 2 and reminding myself, "2 wasn't an easy age, either." I realized I could be overlooking all the great things about 3 because I was too focused on the new hard things.

Perhaps the problem doesn't lie in faulty memory as much as the way we let the faulty memory make us victims. Whatever the story is, whenever it takes place, we want things to be super hard for us because that is more interesting than things being pretty much normal. 

But is it possible that things were good then, better now, and will only get better? I think President Monson said it best when he said, "The future is as bright as your faith." And our stories are as bright as we make them!

(And, to make one more comparison -- yes. Joseph did have as much hair as Matthew. Lots of people have asked.)

How God Does Spring in Michigan

First, He always starts later than you expect. He's busy, after all! He might give you a few hints here and there in March, and He might green up the grass for you, but don't expect much more til April.

That's when He washes His hands (He likes to wash His hands a lot, which is why it rains so much) and gets to work. That first rainstorm leaves the trees with a green coating, proving Robert Frost wrong. Nature's first green is not gold but rather moss. But it disappears as quickly as it came, and you spend the next few days squinting, assuring yourself that there really was green there. You might even convince yourself you still can see it.

April 6th

A few days later, He opens up his latest version of Microsoft Paint and opts for the airbrush.

Armed with a gray background, gray-brown trees, and some green spray paint, He gets to work, starting from the ground and working up.

April 11th. Those permalinked pine trees in the back don't count as spring colors.

 

April 18th

April 25th

April 25th

May 3rd

May 6th

Every now and then, He takes a break from His methodical ground-to-sky approach and airbrushes a tree in one fell swoop, just to get us excited.

Still plenty of bare branches on the other trees, though.

His color of choice is yellow-green, but it's clear He has soft spots for pink, white, yellow, and even magenta and red.

He couldn't decide on a color for this tree, so He alternated between a few.

How many magenta trees can you count?

Sometimes, He might get a little lazy,

That poor tree on the far left

but overall, His airbrushing technique is perfect and exquisite.

May 8th

Although it's unlikely He will take the paint bucket and make the sky permanently blue (gotta keep washing His hands), when He does decide to use blue instead of gray, He will be sure to use the best blues possible.

If it were up to me, I'd be using paints instead of airbrushes . . . but spring in Michigan is definitely worth the wait.