In Which We Take an Excess of Cell Phone Pics on the First Day of Spring

March is adolescent, I think. She doesn’t know yet what she wants to be, so she tries out winter and spring by turns, without any apparent reason. However, she charms us with her possibilities, and we love her. After all, seasons are amazing. The turn of a season has to be a little dramatic to make us properly thankful. I have been switching out snow boots and rubber boots the whole month, depending on the caprices of the weather. Last Monday Olivia and I took our first bike ride of the season, wearing just light jackets. The boys were begging to take the first dip of the year in the pond. That evening they went skiing up at the Knob. For weeks we have been planning to have a First Day of Spring party, only they call it “Back to Spring” which cracks me up.

Addy confided her not-so-secret aspirations to have lemon cake with tulips on top. She had to make sure we all knew since she is “too low” to do it herself. Yesterday Alex spent a few hours in the kitchen, baking goodies. We cleaned the windows and hung our happy flappies.

Then this morning we awoke to this:

We decided to make our own sunshine, since clearly, it was the first day of spring on the calendar. First we did school and started the laundry, of course. Always. (Or not.) Then we spent an hour making these, and it was fun, fun.

As usual, I had a plan that I quickly scrapped and just let them loose with paper and stapler and glue gun. These are not true-to-tutorial  flowers, but I like them anyway.

Of course, everybody was hungry before we got our decor done. I have long ago scrapped exotic food for parties. Instead we just use ordinary stuff and pretty it up, use our fun dishes, and light some candles. Gregory helped me with the food this time. It was the spring party of our dreams, all but the tulips part, but Addy was okay with candies on her cupcakes instead of yellow tulips. 🙂 The little pepper flower in a cucumber pot was her consolation prize.

And yes, I ate one of those cupcakes. Solidarity is so important in family life, wouldn’t you agree?

See out the window there? That is snow fuzzing down at an astonishing rate. But it won’t last long. That’s our mantra. This is my favorite kind of snow, the sticky, fairy-world kind. We dug the snow pants out of the box where I had tentatively stored them last week, and we went out to play in it.

 This may be the result of too much Calvin and Hobbes.

Come what may, we know what we know about the calendar, and the dogwood wreath is staying on the door. (But the skis are going to the attic.)