Where is Spring?

On Wednesday night, we had the much-anticipated “Amazing Race” for the combined Young Men/ Young Women Activity at church. We had carefully planned out 6 challenges for 6 teams, printed out clues and passports and Robyn even made a trophy. We forgot that March is usually the snowiest month of the year here in Montna.

True to history, there was a full-on blizzard and I had to adjust my challenge (I was supposed to meet the teams at the dock of the lagoon and have them row across, grab a flag, and row back to pick up their next clue). I thought the lagoon might be iced over by the time the race started, so I just had the kids run AROUND the lagoon and grab the flag. Meanwhile, Rich drove the girls over to my van to see how things were going (to see if I had the sense to stay in the van instead of standing on the dock freezing to death--I did). They hopped in the back of the van to keep me company and they watched Spring for Strawberry Shortcake on the van’s DVD player.

If you haven’t been lucky enough to watch this video every single day and have it memorized (Hi, MATT), I’ll tell you what happens. Strawberry Shortcake wants to go plant her berries, but spring is late! She looks at her calendar and it’s March 21st, but outside it’s still and slushy, snowy, muddy mess. So she and her friends go and visit Old Man Winter and turns out he’s waiting for Spring, too—and Spring is a little fairy who’s goofing around. They find her and tell her to get her butt in gear and make the winter go away. Spring finally learns why her job is important and Strawberry Shortcake and her posse get to plant their respective crops and life is good again.

As I sat in the front of the van, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if we could just go down to Arizona and capture Spring and bring her back with us? Because, yeah, I now it’s like this every winter, but MAN, I am so sick of winter EVERY MARCH! This year it’s especially bad because Easter is in March and it will be all muddy and sad. The only consoling thought for me is that, hey—it’s moisture and we need it—I will be glad to have soft wet soil to plant MY GRASS and FLOWERS—MY VERY OWN— in this year.

So there’s your answer, Matt, in a round-about way. According to S.S., Spring is a little fairy who is having a little too much fun down in the WARMER climates to come up here and save us from winter. Maybe you’ll feel better if Arizona wins tonight. We can hope (or be REALLY depressed…;))!