Today it's raining and 50-degrees -- thanks California! The ice is melting away and the snow is, well, melting down. There's too much of it to melt away in only one day of warm weather. After Eric got up from his nap, we went outside for awhile to play in the rain. I got his rain boots out of the closet, put him in his rain jacket, grabbed my jacket, Greg's snow boots, and an umbrella and we headed out. During, apparently, the heaviest part of the rain. He started out by playing with the spatula and wooden spoon, scooping snow onto the ground in the water.

After awhile I pulled some rhododendron leaves and we played "follow the leaves". The way our driveway is (mis)designed, the water running down our (slight) hill runs through the "Y" of our driveway and back out onto the street. Then it runs down the neighbors' side-drive and into their side yard to become a huge pool. We tossed leaves into the stream in our driveway, and once we'd tossed them all, we went out and followed them down the hill. Many leaves needed to get unstuck from asphalt, sticks, or snowbanks, so there were plenty to follow. At the end, they headed under the snowbank in front of the neighbors' side-drive and got stuck.

At this point I decided that it was time to head in, since if my wet hands were getting cold, Eric's probably were too. We headed back uphill, freeing a last few leaves along the way. Eric confirmed my decision by jumping up and down in the deepest part of the stream, soaking his pants past the knees. He headed towards the rhododendrons saying "more leaves, more leaves" but gracefully conceded after I insisted (several times, with additional explanation) that it was time to go inside. I actually expected to have to pick up a crying toddler and haul him inside, but was pleasantly surprised. We got inside, took off the rain stuff and then Eric asked to watch Cars. I changed him out of his wet pants and added a sweater to help warm him up. No pics, unfortunately (Greg would kill me if I got the camera soaked) but hopefully this description gives you some happy images of toddler + rain + leaves.