Good Weekend, No Doubt

It feels like we have had the most miserable spring weather this year. Maybe it’s just that the bad weather has come on the weekends so we notice it more. But my son’s soccer games have been cancelled several times, and even when he does play it seems extra cold.

So, this weekend, when we finally had some beautiful weather, I think we appreciated it even more than usual.

My wife took advantage by having a large garage sale to benefit the ongoing relief efforts from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan. She and the other women who organized the event raised over $1,000.

Our family got outside with two picnics this weekend. Do folks in California ever picnic? My theory is that if you have good weather all the time, you take it for granted and don’t appreciate it like we do in the Midwest. Even for us, we usually picnic only in the spring when we are excited to get outside after the long, cold winter. By mid-summer, the novelty wears off and we’d rather eat in air-conditioned, bug-free comfort.

Our first picnic was on Friday evening when we had dinner in a spot that overlooked a picturesque golf course. Okay so it wasn’t all that picturesque, and it was only a Frisbee golf course, but it was still fun. After eating, we played a round. With the numbers on each hole, it is Kai’s favorite sports activity.

We also had a picnic lunch at our local forest preserve on Sunday afternoon. It is Kai’s favorite local spot for hiking because the trails are marked with signs that indicate the distance. Again, numbers are the attraction.

My favorite part of the weekend, though, came at Kai’s soccer game on Saturday. Apparently he was talking about elements as he was playing. At halftime, the coach came over to me and said that Kai had named the group ‘Team Elements.’

Kai designated himself hydrogen. But, since he was wearing uniform number 6, Coach suggested that perhaps he should be a different element, whatever one had the atomic number of 6. I asked Kai which one that was and he said that it was carbon.

But, Coach said that he thought that carbon was number 12. I asked Kai again, just to make sure that he understood the question. He repeated that carbon was number 6. I told Coach that if Kai says it is carbon, you could be sure that it is carbon. But, Coach remained skeptical.

After the game, we looked in the element book that Kai had in the car. What, doesn’t everyone have a book about elements in the car? Sure enough, element number 6 is carbon.

And so, my takeaways from this weekend are: junk can be valuable; we can have picnics if there are numbers involved; and, when it comes to the periodic table, don’t doubt my son.