Written with love, by Felicia
I love this time of year. Right when the winter frost starts to slowly recede and the days get longer, my husband and I get itchy – itchy to do spring cleaning, itchy to do home renovations, and itchy to plan vacations. All winter we sort of store up all our ideas and bit by bit, and once the spring comes, we each start to mention them. “So, I was thinking, this year we could…”
We each have our own ideas: Sometimes it’s tackling a certain part of the house and making a day-long trip to IKEA (and then another day-long of putting everything together). We borrow one of our parent’s SUVs, trek to the store an hour away, spend all day shopping and eating, fill up the car to the brim (mostly with impulse buys), and then fill up our house with boxes after we get home. Once we tackle putting whatever we got together, it really is a great feeling to see your finished product in a space and know that you can check one project off your list.
Sometimes, it’s looking out at our yard and thinking, “This year, I want to plant flowers here, and take down this tree, and get a fire pit for the patio.” Every year, there is something new that we want to add, remove or redesign in our yard. Even mulching and weeding seems exciting after six months of being cooped up inside with shut windows, dark afternoons, and freezing temps. We’ve already gotten the fire pit and have used it a few times. I can tell that’s going to be our new favorite summer pastime – sitting by the fire roasting marshmallows and making s’mores.
The one thing that I love most about this time of year is that the whole summer is ahead of us. We have an open calendar to go anywhere we want. Walt Disney World is usually in that mix somewhere, as we’re huge Disney fans, but that’s usually in the off season. Our summer trips are usually planned around visiting family, visiting friends, and it helps if there is a baseball stadium nearby too as we love going to baseball games, checking out major league ballparks, and getting some field dirt to add to our collection. While this year, we’re still trying to figure out where we are going, we have about three different trips in mind. While we normally only end up doing one, sometimes two, it’s always so much fun to lay all our ideas out, scope out the travel plans, figure out costs, and then pick the winner of this year’s vacation.
What I love most of all, is that planning and doing all these things is so much fun when you do them with your significant other. If our spring cleaning only amounts to just cleaning out a closet, or our lawn projects only end up with us mowing the lawn, or our vacation plans only end up becoming stay-cations, having a spouse to do them with makes it a lot more fun and a lot more enjoyable because of the company.
So, we want to know, what are your springtime or summertime traditions? Do they involve spring cleaning, or traveling? Maybe just gardening. What do you enjoy doing the most as a couple this time of year?
