All. By. Myself. With Sheep.

We've been trying to take the children out on weekends, for family fun outings.  You know, the type of outings where the parents provide interesting and educational opportunities for their children, and the children roll their eyes and drag their feet and ask if they're done yet so they can go home and watch television.

Actually, our children haven't yet realized that we're boring, so that's nice.  We're sort of working up to it.  I figure Margaret will soon discover exactly how uncool our outings are, but at the moment, seeing her name on a plaque, getting to pretend to ride concrete sheep, and feeding some ducks sets her up for the day.

We had Ellie at the sheep, particularly now that she is big enough that she can climb on and off all by herself.

Of course, one thing that she is certain about, our Ellie who has decided that her sister is a person to be watched, and -- as far as she is able given her diminutive stature -- thwarted, is that Margaret should stick to the large-scale sheep, and Ellie should be allowed to have the small ones.

Unfortunately, Ellie is not yet old enough to realize that the proper strategy for removing her sister from the sheep would be to push the sister, not the sheep.  And I'm not in any particular hurry for her to learn to push her sister any more than she already knows, since I think the sister in question would meet violence with violence, and has height, weight, and reach on small Ellie.