It's Groundhog Day. Again.

Well, Madison saw the groundhog this morning. He actually made a visit to our house! His proclamation: spring is on the way soon!

Actually, spring got here a lot sooner than we expected: this afternoon was incredible outside! Unfortunately, we spent much of it indoors, as Madison's health is still struggling somewhat. We did have the backdoor open, the screen door keeping any bugs and birds outside. It was pleasant having fresh air pour into the house as it did.

This morning's visitation from the groundhog was simple: a few years ago, we bought a groundhog puppet for a skit at church. In fact, here he is in this picture below (we used him Wednesday night at church service in yet another Groundhog Day skit).

So anyway, Madison was on the couch when all of the sudden behind the couch emerged a groundhog! It was a nice little conversation - the end result was that the groundhog did see his shadow, but it was not where a shadow traditionally should be. It seems that this groundhog's shadow was somewhat like the one Peter Pan has: you could see it way up there on the ceiling! We had a bit of a fun story time with that, and did very little else today with Madison outside of a run down to Gwinnett County for costuming related to our upcoming series. We also went to Cracker Barrel (they have these toy violins - we thought one would look great in our Sherlock Holmes display case). While at Cracker Barrel, we all had a nice filling lunch. Madison ate more today than she's eaten in a few days, so that was encouraging.

When we got home, it was time to play some games! Madison and Daddy popped in our latest Lego adventure: "The Clone Wars." This game is a bit more complicated than previous Lego games, but Madison is enjoying it just the same.

After dinner tonight, we watched the two movies we have to watch each year. With Madison, we watched "Jack Frost." This features Pardon-Me-Pete, a groundhog who actually has some serious power. If you look at Old Man Winter, this giant cloud being who rules over all the mighty forces of winter, you'd think that he is rather invincible. Jack Frost and all his co-workers could never stand up to Old Man Winter. Yet, this tiny groundhog can control the powers of the winter season. All he has to do is see no shadow - and winter must go away. This is easily one of the most powerful rodents on the planet.

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A story on ABC news yesterday was talking about how inaccurate the groundhog Punxsutawney Pete was on Groundhog Day. The writer was too lazy to actually show statistics, but instead had a link to a weather-related site run by the U.S. National Climatic Data Center. Perhaps he saw the statistics himself, and agreed that they were indeed rather weak. Here's one of my favorite quotes from that government-run site:

"It really isn't a 'bright' idea to take a measure such as a groundhog's shadow and use it as a predictive meteorological tool for the entire United States."

Ya think? I mean, seriously? To me, it really isn't a "bright" idea to type a dumb sentence like that. For a whole host of reasons.