I’m not exactly sure why this winter seems to be going by so very slowly as compared to past years, but it’s just dragging on, and on… And on.

Maybe it’s that I’m much more house-bound as compared to the past, when I was out of the house at work every weekday. Or perhaps it’s that we’ve had relatively few days that haven’t been either below freezing or snowing (or both). And it probably has something to do with the fact that around here we rarely see the sky, much less the sun, in the wintertime, so the heavy cloud cover just seems so oppressive after a while.

In any case, as far as I’m concerned, spring can come any day now. Here are a few of the specific reasons why…

I think my living room is slowly shrinking, like those walls in Star Wars. Every day they seem just a little bit closer to each other. If spring doesn’t come soon, I think we may be in real danger of being squished. 

I’m looking forward to being able to sleep in an extra 10 minutes every morning since I won’t be having to find snow pants, boots, hats, gloves, scarves, and coats and make sure that the correct article of clothing ends up on the right little girl as they head off to the bus stop.

I won’t have to replace Becca’s boots and socks in the van a total of 5,403 times before we finish running a slew of errands while the big girls are at school in the mornings.

I miss being able to run out and get the mail in my bare feet.

I hate our front door.  It’s dark, I can’t see out of the windows since they’re a foot higher than I am tall, and it lets in absolutely no light. Being that we can’t afford to replace it, I can’t wait until I can start leaving it open during the day again.

Sending the kids outside to play when they need to run off energy. I mean, that one’s obvious, right? 

With winter-ish birthdays for all 3 girls, spring means a good six months before having to worry about or deal with buying presents for any of my kids for any reason. “Oh, you’d like that toy/book/stuffed animal”? Yep, we’ll add it to your list. 

Spring means garage sale season, and my pile in the garage of “things to sell” has been growing exponentially all winter.

We’ve been watching way more television than I’m comfortable admitting. I’m looking forward to turning the tv off and taking walks and bike rides again.

Spring and summer clothes take up a lot less space in drawers and hampers than bulky winter ones do. In the winter, when we have clean clothes the drawers overflow and too many dirty ones overflow the hampers. Either way, spring = less laundry and that makes me a happy mama.

Seeing colors other than white or dirty gray outside the windows.

Cooking out on the grill gives us a lot more dinnertime options that everyone in the family will eat.

and…

Warm temperatures will mean that our basement master bedroom will finally warm up to above 60 degrees.  Woo hoo! 

Check out other Thursday 13 lists!