Spring is Here!

I love the Spring time!! I love everything about it! The thing is, I am quickly realizing that there is no such thing as “spring” in AZ. In fact, there is no such things as “fall” either. In AZ there are only two seasons….Summer and cooler weather. I can’t even bring myself to call it a “winter”. Regardless, I'm not complaining and last week was the first day of Spring, and in Arizona, that means the first day of a very quickly approaching HOT summer!!

There are a few things that I have noticed that let’s me know that summer is quickly on it’s way. They all revolve around our wonderful Easter weekend! Here’s my list of things and a quick recap of our fun fun weekend!

1. MOWING THE LAWN
Saturday the day began early with Austin mowing the lawn. That’s the first indication that summer is fast approaching because it’s time to get up EARLY on Saturday morning to mow the lawn to escape the heat!

2. FLOWERS
Our cute friends dropped by a bouquet of freshly picked flowers when they borrowed our lawn mower because there’s busted. Even though people may think Arizona is all brown and desert-y, which in most cases it is, we do have some pretty extraordinary flowers that grow early in the year that really brighten up the streets and yards, and in my case, my kitchen table! I practically made Austin run to Home Depot right then and there to buy me some of those flowers to plant! They were beautiful!

3. SANDALS and SHORTS
If there is one thing I love, it’s wearing sandals. And the thing I love about sandals, is that my feet get tan. I noticed that I was sporting a little tan line on my toes and that Dax was too and it just made me smile. I love tan feet. And of course, jeans are no longer. It’s shorts from here on out. That was our attire Saturday as we got ready for the afternoon with my family.

4. PICNICS and BBQ’s
Last year we started a tradition of getting together the Saturday before Easter to play in the park, BBQ and have an egg hunt. Sunday’s are hard to gather everyone and this gives us all a nice chance to relax and play. So Saturday was our 2nd Annual Kreipl Easter Picnic. We met at the park right next to my house and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite traditions. The kids play in the sand, run around on the grass and play with all the toys brought by everyone. After dinner we have a huge egg hunt and everyone loves that!!

5. WATER BALLOONS
This year I thought it would be fun to fill up some water balloons and have a water balloon toss at the park. Me and Dax do this quite a bit in the backyard and he loves it, and with Saturday being such a gorgeous day, I thought all the other cousins would have fun too. I had each of the kids pick an adult to play with and everyone had so much fun! I think I’ll do that again next year!

6. EASTER SUNDAY
When you’ve slept with windows open and fans on the night before Easter Sunday, you know it’s going to be a pretty great day! I’m holding out turning on the actual air conditioner because there will be plenty of that in the months to come!
I stole an idea from Jamie about making Easter bunny footprints throughout the house with powdered sugar and told Dax that the Easter bunny had come. He ran to see the feet and thought it was a crack up. We have the whole thing on video. The Easter bunny left him a note in his room with clues of all sorts of things he did around the house while Dax was sleeping, and the last clue was that the Easter bunny went and played in “Dax’s house”. This is the little clubhouse that Santa brought Dax and he would sleep in the thing if he could. He loves it. He ran to check out his basket and didn’t come back in all morning.

7. SPRING FEVER
You’d think with Dax getting to play outside all the time, he wouldn’t have Spring Fever. He always gets to ride his bike outside, play at the park, roll around in the grass and eat lunch in “Dax’s house”, but for some reason, this weekend especially, he was in RARE form. Even more non stop than usual, even more spunkier than usual, even more full throttle than usual, and even more rambunctious then usual. You’d think that was impossible with how crazy he is most the time, but he was double his usual self this weekend. The only way I could get him to hold still for a picture in his Easter outfit was to play Simon Says. I bet you can guess what Simon said in this picture?? Does Dax’s Spring Fever explain why I didn’t get a picture of the boys together (or one of the whole family?)? But then again, maybe it wasn’t spring fever at all, maybe it was the handfuls of candy he started popping at 7:30am!!!

Spring is here, but we’re not fooled, we know that’s you SUMMER sneaking up on us way too soon!!