Thawing Out

A few months ago, I boasted about what Playground Junkies the Molloy's are and how nothing - including weather - can keep us away from our playground fixes. Well sadly, this winter we discovered our playground kryptonite: multiple feet of snow. It's not about the cold - we can handle cold - it's more about the waist high snow making it impossible to actually walk around or go on any of the completely buried equipment. Because we've had so much snow this winter - and multiple feet of it stuck around for so long - we went for almost two months without a playground trip. That is definitely a record! A few weeks ago, the kids were in such playground withdrawal that I actually shoveled a trench under the swings in our backyard so they could actually swing a little bit.

So you can only imagine the excitement that ensued last weekend when a lot of the snow actually melted and we could finally hit the playground circuit again. It couldn't have been more than 50 degrees, but Elise came out of the house and exclaimed "Mom it's so HOT! Is it summer now?!" Crazy what a few months of bad weather will do to your sense of what is considered "hot"!

It's amazing how far Lucas has come physically in the few short months it's been since we last went to the playground. As we discovered this winter, he loves climbing (unfortunately in the house that means he climbs onto the dining room table, kitchen counter and things like that) and was in heaven to be able to climb up on things without getting the riot act! He had so much fun climbing and running, sliding and even swinging (he hasn't liked the swings much in the past). Elise also had a great time and didn't have any trouble getting back into her playground groove.

We hit a couple of playgrounds last weekend - some with more snow/ice still on the ground than others - but spring is definitely on the horizon. We're all so very excited about spring. This has been a particularly crazy winter and we have all been feeling cabin fever, particularly lately. Of course it's supposed to rain heavily all next weekend, which will probably keep us away from the playground yet again. But at least it's not snow!