It's spring...I think.

So...it's been a while.  Sorry about that.  I could make excuses about the last miserable weeks of pregnancy (which mainly consisted of me eating anything that sat still long enough, relevant blog post to follow at later date), or how I've more or less been trapped topless on my couch for the last several weeks in various stages of sleep deprivation as I nursed an apparently bottomless pit of a newborn. I could even cite how frustrating the last five minutes have been trying to type out these few sentences while the two-year-old taps everything--keyboard, monitor screen, me, books, and little sister--with her wand while alternately singing Twinkle Twinkle and demanding to watch Octonauts, and the aforementioned little sister wakes up from her 5 millisecond nap to scream for more milk. (Aside: It is now three days later.  These kids have stamina.)

But I digress.

Life has pretty much continued as normal.  It's the beginning of Break Up, which is Alaskan for what the rest of the world calls Spring.  This quaint term refers to the ice on the rivers breaking up.  In real life, this means that our thigh-deep snow is turning to knee-deep slush and ankle-deep water, depending on the area.  We are firmly at or above freezing during the day, which means that it is now possible to make a real snowball, which I've been assured is a sign that Break Up is underway.

To celebrate, the kids built a snowman and took a snowbath a la Finland, because, hey, that's what you do in the spring.  (Video included on FB due to technical difficulties on the blog.)  They rolled around in the snow and then came in to hug mom, because they're the devil.  In other news, Rick may or may not be a bad influence. 

After justice was done upon them, we went to Mush for Kids, a yearly event in Fairbanks where they celebrate sled dogs.  In case you haven't heard, dogsledding--or mushing--is kind of a big deal up here.  Apparently the dogs still have a ton of energy a couple weeks after the Iditarod and the Nenana Classic.  The solution is to attach them to sleds full of screaming kids and have them run laps.  There were also pens of disinterested puppies to pet, some fluffy bear-dogs, and an alpaca because, well, why not?

It's hard to describe, but there is definitely a Spring-y feel to the air.  The snow is sloughing off the roof and there is such a constant drip-drip off the house that it sounds like it's raining. We've cranked open the windows since it's a toasty 45 degrees, trying to get rid of the stale foot-fug that's accumulated since November.  In one of my favorite books (Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett), Spring in a forest is described as "the brighter sun and longer days that would pump a million gallons of sap several hundred feet into the sky in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard."  It feels like that--like the world is about to come alive again, and feeling that impatience surge in your own veins, a restless desire to burst outside and run anywhere--everywhere--to feel the sun on your skin and cleanse your lungs with the icy-fresh air and exalt in being alive again, too.

Of course, there's still the slush for now.  Which will be followed by the mud, and then two waves of mosquitos, and eventually the few weeks of omnipresent sun before we start sliding back towards winter.

It's going to be awesome.

*Editor's Note: within 24 hours of this post, it was snowing again.  Go fig.