Getting into the spring of things...

Yesterday, as I sat on the deck of Nub's Nob, I grieved the passing of the deepest parts of winter. For a moment.

And then the blue sky and sun (yes! The sun!) swallowed me whole and I basked in that feeling we forget, and then remember, every year about this time. Something like rebirth, I suppose. Something that feels like we're waking up to a whole new place to live-- not better than the white, still, elder statesman of a place we've been presiding in for so many months now-- just different. New. Exciting.

My entire family-- all three kids, my parents, my brother-- were at the hill, celebrating a milestone of sorts for our clan: witnessing one of my children (as in, my 13-month old daughter) on skis for the first time. Just look for yourself:




We were also celebrating Max's first gold medal in Nastar. He's got an insanely slightly competitive nature that he may have inherited from his father. Ahem. While my sweet Noah

(or in this picture, horrifically impatient and wishing I would just. stop. the. snapshots) is totally happy plowing through powder or scaring the pants off me doing whatever it is he and his friends do all day on their twin tips in the terrian park, Max has been plotting since, um, perhaps the day he was born, for the moment he could get into a race course and "tear it up, mama." So despite the fact that I'm of the "it's not about winning or losing, it is all about how we play" school of thought, it was pretty hard not to be taken with his normally goofy self being so stoic and shining all at once from under his helmet.

He was, as if you can't tell, so very proud.

How I love mid-March at the ski hills.

Actually, how I love mid-March everywhere Up North. Today it was 52-degrees. We got out our rain boots because the driveway was practically pulling us into those fresh-melt puddles.


We scavenged the vanishing snow for a good sledding run, got soaked and swapped out wet clothes for dry ones.

We stuck our hands in the mud that is suddenly surfacing along the edge of the pavement-- you know-- that edge where the grass is starting to appear.

I stopped in the middle of a game of snowball tag to soak it all up.

To open my arms and spin around and get lost in that feeling of being renewed and reminded that in every moment, every day, we have the chance to be restored, to be the very essence of, well, spring.