It’s becoming an annual occurrence this time of year. Spring hits and our family gets crazy busy. But it’s not just us, our friends and neighbors all get so busy, too. With school in its final stretch and summer looming large, our whole community goes into overdrive.
Everyone starts making plans. Moms walk around chanting their schedules to each other, “June is swim team. July is family vacation. Camps in August…” As we pass on the street or in emails and texts, we compare schedules and look for times to sync up. We’re like robots with Spring Fever.
Our frenzy to prepare for summer mirrors the hyperactivity happening in nature. Several birds and lizards and ladybugs have taken over our back patio. Butterflies swarm around the honeysuckle bursting out everywhere. Dozens of birds are using our backyard feeder as their free lunch.
When actual summer hits South Texas, it will be so darn hot, life will come to a near standstill. It’s like every kid, bird, bee and mom is trying to cram as much as activity as they can into these beautiful spring days.
It’s the storm before the calm.
Some pictures of the (spring) fever pitch around here….
The kids have discovered honeysuckles. They pick them by the bushel and suck out the juice. If you know this causes some kind of rare cancer, maybe don’t tell me. In their eager passion for honeysuckles, they’ve eaten hundreds already. The damage is done–and so our the honeysuckles since our kids have overpicked them. Oops.
Tball Season is here. That cute kid using his glove as a hat is Sam. That cute Coach is Sam’s dad. That new stress in our house is what comes when Sam’s dad coaches a tball team single-handedly.
This summer, we will spend almost every day in our swimming pool. By August, the pool will become so routine, the kids won’t even think about the fact THEY ARE IN THE SWIMMING POOL! They’ll barely scream and carry on about it. The pool will be as much a part of our day as staying in our pjs until noon. But now? In April? Yeah. The pool is a frantic place, full of LOTS of screaming and carrying-on.
Speaking of pjs until noon, here is the world’s most laid-back kid (with his new Flock of Seagulls haircut). The most laid-back kid in the world doesn’t get riled up in Spring like the rest of us do. He does, however, appreciate a little down time to work on his gamer skillz.
Hello, grill. It’s been a long (not really) winter, filled with baking muffins and breads and simmering, complex pots of soup on the stove. Oh, how I’ve missed you, you give-hubby-some-meat-and-send-him-outside-and-dinner-is-done genius dinner helper. Welcome to Spring. We are about to use the heck out of you. Thanks.
Fish Frenzy! Catie and Sam love to fish. They’ve recently discovered they can catch three-pound bass in our backyard, so they’re frantic to get back there whenever M will go with them. The other half of the family doesn’t really share their love of digging up worms, so we watch them from the back patio, which, as I mentioned, we are currently borrowing from the lizards and ladybugs.
We close on the beach house next week, which gives us about three weeks to get it ready for the rental market. Do you like to paint? Assemble IKEA furniture? Hunt for shabby chic beach house decorating deals? Repair crumbling dry wall? Install light fixtures? Come on down to Galveston, we need your help. (No, really. We need a lot of help.)
(Oh. And aren’t these chairs so cute?)
Thanks. You’ve helped already. Now, back to the craziness.
