You Know It's Officially Spring...

...When you wake to the sounds of birds chirping and twittering in the trees and building nests under the eaves of your house.

...When you hear the first cricket songs at night and actually enjoy them.

Especially when the littlest family member is the one to bring it to everyone's attention by stopping his own incessant chatter asking, "What dat sound, daddy?"

You see, in the desert, crickets have a tendency to sneak into houses unawares during the evenings (when screen doors may or may not have been securely shut) lodging themselves behind the stove or some other hard-to-reach place and stridulating their hearts out all. night. long.

Ask me how I know this.

I'll try not to think about that, however, because tonight...for the first time this year, several crickets were heralding Spring.

Outside in the yard where they're supposed to be.

And it was a beautiful sound. A welcome one.

And we all paused to listen to the symphony for a while before dashing into the house and slamming the door behind us to be sure that none followed us inside.

You might also know it's Spring when you've been doing ridiculous amounts of yard work, an ice-cream truck goes tootling by and your parents actually spring for a treat.



"Ahhh, yeah. Dat's what I'm talkin' 'bout."

Which brings me to yet another sure sign of Spring:

Boys covered in dirt.

I think that one is pretty much self-explanatory.

Happy Spring, everybody!