Signs of Spring

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous (today isn't bad either, though it's a little windy for my tastes). I had planned to go to the store and get the boys some zip up hoodies that they can wear this Spring, along with some new Sunday shoes since they've grown out of the old ones, and some more "four-year-old underpants," as Drew calls the new underwear I finally got for him and Owen (because the "two-year-old underpants," which actually were almost two years old, are "just too small"). 

We got our sweaters on and headed out the door, and made it as far as me backing the car out of the driveway and parking it on the street so the kids could ride their bikes around the driveway. We ended up spending about two and a half hours outside, just playing and enjoying the warm sunshine and the uncharacteristic lack of breeze. 

While we were out, I decided my flowerbeds could stand some attention, so I got out my gloves and went to it, pulling weeds and other dead plant matter that had piled up in the Fall and had been sitting there all winter. It was pretty gross. But I'm sure all that stuff helped keep the bulbs warm underground, since we didn't really have much snow to insulate them from the cold.
The kids had a lot of fun helping me clean up the flowerbeds. It became a sort of treasure hunt as we discovered new life poking up out of the dirt. 

We found my amaryllis:

Which, in the summer will look like this:

We found my crocuses (croci? I'm thinking not, because my spell checker isn't liking that word. Who knows):

Which, in a few weeks will look like these:

We found my tulips:

Which will soon look like this:

(The bunch of leaves on the right is what the amarillys looks like in the spring. All those leaves will die before the stalk with the flowers pops up.)

We found some new strawberry leaves and shoots, and a lovely ladybug crawling among them:

They'll look like this in a few months (not that the lady bug will magically become a strawberry--that'd be weird):

I'm looking forward to Spring so much! (Or, as Samantha would say, "mo munch!" I love it when she tells me, "Teenk oo mo munch!" when I do something for her.) Today was just what I needed to get me through the last few days of Winter and the crazy weather that always accompanies a Southeast Idaho Spring. For example, Sunday it snowed, Monday was upwards of 50 degrees and sunny with nary a cloud in sight!