Unless...

Okay, we all know that I'm a little quooky about holidays. I'm not crafty, so I don't go that route, but I do love books and movies and Peanuts specials. So they figure heavily into everything that I do.

Green week is a tricky one. There just aren't that many really amazing books about recycling. Which is sad, because of course reduce, reuse, recycle is an awesome concept that I try to adapt every day to my life. Which explains why I bought 8 bags of used books yesterday. Because I am helping the library reuse. Obviously. :)

Anyway, our Earth Day books are decent, but nothing much to write home about. Fancy Nancy, The Berenstein Bears, and My Little Pony.

To celebrate Earth Day we take a walk around the "loop," which is the road that circles Rix Mills, and we take trash bags and we pick up what we find. The girls love this. This year they made up an Earth Day song, which went something like, "We are cleaning Mother Earth, we are cleaning Mother Earth..."

Now, Arbor Day is even harder. I have searched high and low for Arbor Day books, and they do not exist. So this year it hits me-The Lorax. Why it took me this long to stumble upon this obvious selection, I don't know. But it makes the perfect Arbor Day book.

Betsy always brings home a tree from school, so we planted it. We have planted a tree every year that we have lived here, and exactly two have succeeded. It doesn't hold out much hope for this new little sapling.

However, the tree that has thrived and grown the most came from my Grandma's house, which makes me so happy every time I see it start to bloom. She allowed me to take it before she died, she wanted me to have something from her yard. It makes me smile.

Oh, and we watch "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown." I know that sounds dorky, but it's actually really cute.

At school, they planted a tree on Friday, and they asked, "What can trees do for us?" Betsy answered, "Trees can make us smarter." "How?" "Trees are cut down to make paper, and paper makes books, and books make us smarter."

Yes, she's definitely my child.