Operatic Bennyism

As Ben and I walked down the hall of his preschool this afternoon, he said, "Mom, do you remember the part of The Magic Flute where Papageno is eating the feast sent to him by Sarastro?"

And it occured to me that this was quite likely the first time this particular sentence had been uttered in that hallway.

Ben has also been practicing the Queen of the Night's aria.  The one that my sister and I used to butcher sing on the last leg of the school bus journey, when the only kids left on the bus were us and a few others from our neighborhood who already knew we were weird that way.

Here's a very peaceful scene.  It's what our street looked like at about 6:15 am last Friday, when I went out to shovel the driveway for our first snowfall of January.  We got a lot more over the weekend, but today it hit 50 and rained all day, so Ben's lovely snowman and igloo are now ignominious lumps of slush.  I think we somehow skipped winter and it's really, secretly, late March, but nobody's telling us.