Our first days of Spring

Yay! This weekend, the skies have opened up and we have been rejoicing! Yesterday temperatures were in the mid-sixties and I cracked open the windows and the storm-windows from their frozen positions of winter, creaking open the locks and using all my strength to pry them open and let the fresh air blow through my house - for the first time in 6 months. It was BEAUTIFUL! and i got dirty in the flower boxes around my house, raking the dead leaves from the soil so the little arms of my daffodils could reach higher! And i was so pleased to discover many more things growing that i had not planted in the fall. i'm excited to see what they become. my guess is tulips also and then some leafy thing, with a pretty peppery taste (but landon told me not to eat them). so, we'll see. yay!

i also went on my first run of the year yesterday. it wasn't long - i just ran until the trail was covered in flood-water. in these last few days, i have seen life everywhere! our silver maples are starting to bud in our yard (see new banner), and i saw a snake, heard frogs, swallowed bugs, beheld trumpeter swans, etc...

today i was thinking to myself that i am so grateful to be surrounded by wetlands. if it weren't for the wetlands surrounding our town, i know that we would be completely surrounded by development for miles and miles. though in the flooding of last fall i was shunning the wetlands because they bred the mosquitoes that unceasingly tormented us for weeks. but now...now that the spring time is here and the flood waters are only melting snow and not breeding insects at an exponential rate, i am so very grateful for their presence in our town! it is through the wetlands that we were able to ski, run, walk, and will be taking our canoe (once we get another paddle!)

another (or perhaps finally, the first) matter of importance: Landon had another opportunity to present a paper yesterday. He presented his paper, "An Evaluation of Christian Arguments Against Human Reproductive Cloning," at an annual conference put on by The American Academy of Religion. I was unable to attend because i was working yesterday, so i am not able to give my unbiased opinion. but landon said that it went quite well and he said that he got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people.

so glad spring is here!