The entire Seattle area has been sprinkled with magic dust. When the sun FINALLY makes its lazy appearance here, the whole world (of Seattle) changes. People are happier, friendlier. Maybe they don’t need to be quite so jacked up on caffeine. The sun energizes them in a way that mocks a coffee-induced stupor during a rainstorm or gray constipated sky. We don’t need to be quite so wired and high-strung. We’re all just a little more laidback and a lot happier.

Funny to think that only five days ago we had snow!! This wacky weather. OK, I will move on, I don’t actually plan on blogging about the weather.

This weekend, with the added blessing of sunny warm magic, was fantastic. My brother Timothy and sister-in-law Rebecca came up to celebrate an early Easter. We spent Saturday at the parental units’ place. There was Lego-play, delicious food, a trip to the art museum (for a select few of us), Easter egg-dying, wine-drinking, more delicious food-eating…and more Lego-play. Matthew spent the night and got some extra bonding time with his uncle/godfather. He was in heaven.

Sunday morning, I actually got my butt out of bed at 7 and went for a 6 mile run – solo. This is big. I’ve been feeling pretty blah about my running lately – not getting to train for the half marathon like I wanted to, and now even Andrea (my 3 mornings a week running partner) is cutting back on our together runs so that SHE can train harder. (Look, the girl’s legs are twice as long as mine. She’s definitely faster than me, so even on a good day I hold her back. Oh, and I have this little habit of talking the entire time we run which slows us up even more. It definitely makes sense that she do most of her training runs without me). So, I needed to prove to myself that I still have it in me to do this on my own. I CAN self-motivate. I needed to find that runner within who ran a 13 mile training run (without music or headphones or anything) on a dusty TRACK (around and around and around…) on a 75 degree sunny afternoon. I needed to find the girl that talked and smiled through 26.2 miles of pure hell and torture. Anyway. Found her! (How are ya? I’ve missed you. Welcome back.)

After my run we went to church for Palm Sunday. Matthew was still with my fam, so we only had Zachary to take care of, and then he got to play in the nursery during Mass. Sheesh! Who knew that having only one offspring was so easy?!! We’d definitely forgotten. Post-Church, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed outside for some sun and much-needed yard work. Dad, mom and Tim (Chris was at home sick), brought Matthew home around that time. Now, Matthew has already had two visits from the Tooth Fairy – his two bottom guys. I was a little disappointed, however, that by the time those teeth came out, the permanent ones were already securely in place. No big gappy grin for him. We had dinner with friends on Sunday evening – friends who have THREE boys; ages 5 ½, 4 ½, and 2. I will admit that I was a bit jealous when I saw 5 ½ year old Ben’s big ‘all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth’ smile.

Much to my glee, we discovered last week, that Matthew’s top two teeth were quite loose and wiggly – particularly the left one. There were many jokes made on Saturday, particularly including my dad and brother Tim, that they would be happy to hold him down and get the pliers to get it out. This, of course, brought the anticipated response of squeals from Matthew. “Noooo!” he would protest with his hand-clamped tightly over his tightly closed mouth.

Yesterday, we spent most of the gorgeous day at the Zoo. Matthew was highly distracted throughout our visit by his Snaggle Tooth. That little thing was literally hanging on by just a thread. I told him in the morning (as he turned it nearly 380 degrees and had it sticking horizontally right out of his mouth), that I didn’t think that tooth would be accompanying us to the Zoo. But, it did. And Matthew spent the entire time, with his grubby little Zoo-dirtied fingers in his mouth wiggling it and moving it all around.

When we got home, the boys played in the backyard while I cleaned off the deck preparing for our first BBQed dinner of the season. All of a sudden, Matthew yelled, “My tooth!” With his crustified and dirt-stained hand he carried that little treasure like it was the Olympic Torch. We put it on a little plastic plate for safe-keeping. The thing was so loose that, in the end, he didn’t even have to pull it. It just all of a sudden fell – it gave up the weary job of clingy by one tiny thread; it let go and landed peacefully on his tongue. And I took, perhaps my favorite picture of Matthew to date. Now, I’m on him to get that other top one out so he can SERIOSULY ROCK the jack-o-lantern look.