Why I love Winter

It's a new year. The Christmas craziness has finally settled down. It's the start of those 3 winter months where not much is happening. As I think about it I realize I really like winter. From December 21st to March 20th. I kind of love it. Both my kids have winter birthdays. Christmas is such a fun way to start the season (and by the time winter actually starts most of the stressful parts of Christmas are done). I love to bake and to feed people and for some reason that is just so much more fun when it's cold. And snow. How beautiful the whole world looks just after a snow storm. I also get to focus on my kids: teaching them, mothering them, reading great stories under cozy blankets, making lots of hot chocolate and pancakes and waffles and gearing up for the occasional snowy sledding outing. We play lots of board games. We make a lot of educational progress during these months. It's cold so I don't have to compete with long park days or swimming pools. There is no big holiday so there are few errands.

Winter is bare and sleepy. It's cold. It's dark but throughout the season the light slowly returns. The long nights give way to more and more sunshine. Before the season ends we usually see some signs of life poking through the frosty ground. Winter gives us a hope we wouldn't need if there was never this chill in the air. How easily we would forget the different hues of green the grass becomes or just how pretty all the tulips look as they bloom if they never left us. It's His reminder to us that He makes all things new, that death dos not get the final word. He will make it all beautiful again.

I've said it before, I love living according to nature, according to God's creation, His time table. Taking the time to be busy at home now gives us the ability to be more carefree as the ground thaws. Seeing His message to us through these seasons reminds me how close He is. I love that about winter.