It was a beautiful almost-Spring day today. It was a day that reminds you that Winter doesn't last forever...just seems to. Thank God for days like these! I'm not sure how non-skiiers would survive until April without these early March "heatwaves" of 58 degrees!

The kids and I played some soccer, some monkey-in-the-middle, did some bike-riding, some dirt digging, and even some skateboarding. Skateboarding, however, was Cat riding down the driveway on her belly; quite a sight!

Kids were out like ants at a picnic. After living in what felt like a ghost-town neighborhood for the past four or five months, saying hello, watching them walk, talk, laugh, ride their Razors and bikes was wonderfully cathartic! I just kept telling myself, "one more month and we can do this everyday!" and I swear it gave me a surge of energy I've been missing.

People, I think, are like flowers; they need sunshine and warmth along with the basic nutrients. When we go without for too long, we start to droop and lose our vibrance.

I remember when I was a kid my mom read that if you put a pointsettia plant in a closet for two months or so, its leaves will change to red in time for Christmas. My mom waited anxiously for two months, ticking off days on the calendar in anticipation of a horticultural masterpiece. When she finally went to the closet and opened the door for the first time in ages, she found a brown stick with shriveled leaves that were so frail the subtle breeze caused by the door opening caused most of them to fall to the floor! My poor mom felt terrible! I think not so much that she was out one pointsettia plant left over from the previous Christmas, but that she actually killed a perfectly good plant!

Pointsettias gain their color slowly so by the time Christmas comes, they're stunning. But did you ever notice what happens after? They slowly fade and get kind of sickly looking, don't they? Just like humans! We get this great color all Summer long and man do we look good! Healthy, vibrant, glowing...by the Christmas rush though, we're struggling to find our tan lines once so difinitive we couldn't believe we were ever as white as that strap mark!

So relish these days because Mother Nature just sends them once in a while in these late days of Winter to keep us from losing our leaves. Tomorrow could be 30 degrees again.