Three Signs of Spring

At our house, we have a few traditions with the start of Spring. These are probably ones that you wouldn't normally think of, but they are constants at our house.

1. Flowers

Every year, I'm showered with these gifts of "flowers" from the kids. Once they determined these were flowers and not weeds, they run around outside and pick every one they can see. This was the pile I got the other day. Ironically, our yard only has a few, thanks to our early application of fertilizer, so I'm grateful that it's only a handful every once in a while. There are others in our neighborhood who seem to be "breeding" dandelions and although I'm sure it's not on purpose, I'm sure glad that isn't our yard or I'd be getting a whole more!



(They get so excited to give me their gifts, I couldn't help but take a picture of them in front of their bounty!)


2. Strawberries

And more importantly, our favorite dessert of strawberry cake. Our local Smith's had strawberries on sale for 99 cents a pound this week, so we picked up a couple and make ourselves a yummy treat. The kids couldn't stand the wait while we baked the cake, waited for it to cool, assembled it, and then let is set up in the fridge. It was almost to much to stand, but when they both got a huge piece a few hours later, they couldn't stop telling me how good it was.



(They almost couldn't stand sitting right behind the cake while I took the picture, but Zach insisted on taking a picture and putting it on the blog.)


3. Spring Cleaning

Now most of you may not think this a good thing. I would agree during the actual cleaning part, but afterwards, I'm always so grateful I spent all the time and energy doing it. This was my list this year. I'm definitely a list person and love to see thing checked off, so you'll see a few places where I added things later - ones I added after I did them, just so I could check them off. Silly I know, but it makes me feel good and helps me remember what additional things I've done as I was going along.


(You'll notice I'm almost done with my inside cleaning - actually I just finished the last few things tonight, but the outside is still yet to be done. This is because of the all the rain and wind we've had the last few days. I hoping to get to the outside stuff in the next few days.)

Luckily for my family, spring cleaning is something I pretty much like to do myself. Not that I don't think anyone else can do it, it's just something I like to do so that I know what's been done and when. Jeremiah is definitely happy about this little fact, although in his defense, he does offer over and over to help out and even gives me tons of help when I'm moving around the heavy furniture and vaccuming behind and underneath everything. This year to show his thanks, he and Hailey came home from the store with a little gift of flowers for me.



It was quite a surprise and made me consider doing this "spring cleaning" thing more often if flowers were going to be given. After 3 full days of cleaning - 6 hours on Saturday alone, I decided that it wasn't worth it. But I was extremely grateful for the thoughtfulness of my husband and his showing of appreciation for my efforts. Do I have a wonderful husband or what?

Well, those are our sign of spring. Maybe not the most obvious or logical, but definitely things we enjoy and look forward to (or look forward to having done in the case of the cleaning) every spring. Hope you all are enjoying your spring!