Handful of Heppers: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For some people, the most wonderful time of the year is the start of winter and the holiday season. I loathe cold temperatures, winter clothes and snow, and the holidays tend to stress me out more than anything else, so winter is most definitely not my favorite time of the year. Instead, it's spring that's the most wonderful time of my year.
Here are some of my favorite things about this time of year:
1. The ability to shave a few minutes off our departure time in the mornings. Without winter coats, hats, and mittens to weight us down, we can easily get out the door in under 5 minutes. That's quite an accomplishment when you've got three kiddos.
2. The warmer temperatures, longer days, and extra outdoor time. There is nothing I like more than plopping myself down on my front porch and watching Caroline play with the neighborhood kids. So far, the twins are happy to sit next to me and play with a basket of toys, so it's almost like taking a mini-vacation. Almost. We've also been enjoying spending time with friends, especially our preschool buddies, at the playground in the afternoons.
3. Flip-flops. Favorite.shoes.ever.

Here are a couple things I do not like about this time of year:
1. The dogs' obsession with sunbathing and their desire to go in and out of the house onto the back deck a million and one times a day. This picture just about sums up Isabel's days when the weather is nice...

2. Flies: Flies are my own personal arch nemeses. When the dogs want to go in and out, in and out, and in and out all day long, I tend to just leave to door open to save myself a million annoying trips to the back of the house. Unfortunately, this allows flies to come into my home, and they drive me insane. Flies are useless and gross, they cause Frances to whip herself into a panic induced seizure, and they make me batty buzzing around and landing on all my nice clean surfaces. So what's a girl to do when she's too lazy to open and shut and open and shut the door all day but cannot live with flies in her home? Well, until this year, I've always left a bottle of Windex on our kitchen counter top solely for the purpose of killing flies. Once inside, the pesky critters typically end up on one of the windows and when they do, I draw my spray bottle faster than the blink of an eye and shoot. It's a win-win: the fly dies almost instantly and my windows are always nice and clean. The only downside of this method is that if you guests in your home, you end up looking kind of like a loon as you sprint through the house wielding a bottle of glass cleaner.
This year, I'd rather spend my time doing something other than hunt flies so I ordered this: https://www.buymagicmesh.com/ For only $19.95, I am hoping to stop the nasty flies dead in their tracks while still allowing my sunbathing-obsessed dogs free reign over the doorway to the back deck. We'll see how it actually turns out when my Magic Mesh is delivered in 4-6 weeks ;)

Ok, enough talk. Here are some pictures and videos of the girls from this past weekend and last week...