Oh how I've missed this

Today? Was kind of amazing. It was sunny and 40 degrees, which I realize isn't all that warm but it sure as heck felt like it. Around noon Quinn happened to notice Meghna, a girl who lives a few houses down from us, walking by our house with her grandfather and wanted to join her. So we spent some time playing out in the rapidly-melting snow with her and then went for a short walk around the neighborhood together. 

 

After picking Donovan up from school the boys were having a snack and noticed Meghna on her porch so asked to go outside again-- we spent a good hour or more outdoors this afternoon, just pushing trucks and drawing with chalk and stomping through the leftover snow. And everyone else was out, too-- we watched a steady trickle as almost every family in Sachem went outside to play or even just for a walk.  After months of hibernating indoors, it was like the whole neighborhood was coming alive again. I saw and got to talk to friends I've hardly seen since the fall. 

At one point I was watching the boys playing on the sidewalk with their friends, watching so many other families outside enjoying the weather, listening to the birds singing in the trees, and I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the clear signs of spring. I've felt that longing for warmer weather, but it's not the warmth so much that I've missed... it's what comes with it. One of the things I loved so much about this place when we moved in, and through the summer and fall, was the way we could just go outside to play for hours at a time, how many other kids would be outside as well, how easy it was to meet people and make friends and run into each other for casual playdates without having to send 50 emails or texts back and forth trying to coordinate something together. I didn't realize till today just how much I have missed that. It also stayed light until after 5pm, and with us "springing forward" this weekend we're about to get even more daylight at the end of the day.  I think I've fared pretty well all through winter, dealt well enough with the cold and the darkness and the snow and ice. And I know it will still be cold for a while and there's still snow on the ground and they still needed boots and mittens and blah blah blah don't burst my bubble. But to be outside today and have it feel so much like those late summer and early fall days, to think of spring ahead and all that means... I just can't begin to describe how happy it makes me.

(I realize that talk of the weather has kinda taken over my blog, and it's what I write about almost more than anything else these days. Which I suppose is to be expected when you spend so long living someplace with no weather, then move someplace that actually has weather changes and seasons and stuff. I'm hoping the novelty will wear off once we've gone through one full cycle and then I'll be able to focus on other things to write about. Maybe.)