A taste of Spring.

"I grew up in a backpack!"
That's what I'd love to hear my kids' brag to their friends about one day, in the future. To have them hold dear to memories of adventures in a child carrier backpack, view from parents' shoulder, (usually over mom's "handkerchief hair"), and having an apple and water bottle passed over the shoulder for snack is one of my fondest desires. In this footprint, I have raised all three of my children; holding them close for all our adventures outdoors. Maddy was only 3 days old when my Dakota Sioux friend took her in to her first sweat lodge for a blessing, and went hiking in the mountains when she was less than a month old. The adventures continued, when, even before Ture was born, we were caught at 14,000 ft in the Rockies in Colorado when our Jeep got a flat tire with a blizzard coming in thru the pass.... I was 5 months pregnant and there was NO way I was hiking down the Forest Service fire road! His love of the outdoors continued even after his arrival, in fact, his first year of life, we called him "Moon Boy" as he would never go down for the night without his ritual star walk wrapped in a blanket with his father down the driveway. It was a wonderful late summer evening tradition, that crept into fall. The evenings got earlier as the temperatures dropped, and the blankets got heavier. The next thing we knew, the boys were coming back in with snow powdered on the blankets; Moon Boy, still cooing over his stars and the joy of talking the moon to sleep. As I write this, Moon Boy - now 4 - is sacked out on the couch on his Star Quilt, having worn himself out playing outside during one of the first nice days of Spring today. (He rode his bike til his wheels fell off. No, really! Well, just one training wheel... but, that took some serious riding from a little guy!) Today, we came full circle and he passed his 'moon' torch on to his little sister as she noticed the moon in the sky for the first time while we were on our walk. She kept looking at me and saying 'Ball-ball'...and I couldn't figure it out... Sometimes Mom is just slow on the uptake! (Well, distracted by the Cedar Waxwings feeding in the hackberry!) I finally GOT it, and we all had a great time pointing and talking about the 'Moon-ball'.

We have had a couple of days of nice weather to tease us, and another blizzard is on the way this weekend. At first they were calling for 3" - 5", now having worked themselves all the way up to at least a foot expected for our area. (We'll see.) I wouldn't mind, but it's already April and I've already got my seeds out on the table and more ordered from Seed Savers! :) Moon-boy/Hawk/Frog/Stays-in-Camp/Mack (all of my son's nicknames) and I spent hours the other day playing a great game of sort the seed beans. As a four year old, he had the best time learning about the pretty beans with names like 'Good Mother Stallard', 'Hidatsa Shield', 'Dutch Bullet's', and his favorite..... 'Painted Pony' beans. Every bean - I mean EVERY bean he sorted he had to have an acknowledge comment like, "Oh, look at THIS little Pony bean! Isn't it just soooo cute!!" Then he would drop it with a sharp clink into the baby food jar and tell me he was winning the race! About every 10 beans, he would have to climb down for a break and go do something else and I'd swap baby food jars with him so that his jars would be more full than mine when he'd get back. I thought it might not be noticed, or at least be a time or two before he did...but, that little guy caught on the very first time he came back to the table! Then he really let out the 'whoot-whoot' cry as he was really winning. Remind me sometime to tell you about where our family picked up the 'whoot-whoot' .... It's become an integral part of our family and is really pretty funny!