Green House.

Today, we ventured to the green house nearby that we've been dying to explore. Our surroundings are still very brown and dry in the Midwest, so being surrounded by greenery was so refreshing. I inhaled the scent of fresh, colorful flowers, and ran my fingers across the thick, yet still delicate leaves. For the first time this year, it felt like Spring and my heart was soaring. Isn't it funny how certain smells can teleport you to a time you didn't even know you remembered? How a scent can bring a fleeting, foggy, dream-like thought of a place, a person, a time in your life?

Sometimes it slaps you in the face and its obvious and moving, like the first time I smelled pipe tobacco after my uncle passed away. His face, his laugh, the feel of his whiskers rubbing roughly against my soft cheek when he gave me a 'hello' or 'goodbye' hug. There was no doubt, no fuzz. But other times, a scent can bring you to this place and you can't quite put your finger on who or where it brings you back to. Like something from a dream, it haunts you, but lifts your spirits at once. I'll never forget the scent of the grass outside my childhood home, how it was littered with clover and lined with hollyhocks. Days spent laying on my stomach, soaking in the gentle, spring-time sun...my little brother running nearby.

Experiencing the trueness and fullness of seasons is one of the greatest things I've encountered in motherhood. The richness of each new season always amazed me as I grew. The scents, the sounds, the colors, the feelings they awakened. The colors and crispness of a Fall day, enjoying a pumpkin treat with a scarf wrapped about my neck as I wandered along paths of amber and crimson. Winter and its cold, crystallized beauty--Christmas, snowmen, bundling up under a big blanket. Summer and the hot, sticky summer nights spent around a bonfire, sipping a cold drink--s'mores, swimming, sun-kissed skin. And Spring. The breath of fresh air after hibernation, the slow fade from brown to green, the sprouting greens, new life.

We've planted some sort of plant every year since Oliver was born, despite living in apartments. Watching his face light up as seeds became sprouts, and sprouts became full-fledged plants...bearing crisp vegetables brings me immeasurable joy and pride. I hope to always be able to show our boys that you reap what you sow, that a little tenderness, hard work, and attention can bring forth a great harvest. That new beginnings are always around the corner. That, despite cold, cold stretches of staleness, there is always a brand new season awaiting us, waiting for us to bloom and start anew.

And I am just so unbelievably excited to share in these lessons, these seasons, these memories. To hold their little hands as they experience this richness of life, to grow more in love with this world and all that it offers, to see God in the details, in the branches, in the vines. I hope that each new day, each new season brings a breath of fresh air to them always, like it does for us.

Here's to a brand new season, a season of warmth, of love, and of adventure. To making memories that will surely stick. Even if sometimes lingering only in their subconscious.

Cheers.