I know there are plenty of people who dream about living in a place where it is 72 degrees and sunny all year long. I am NOT one of those people.
Don't get me wrong, 72 and sunny sounds delightful...for a while. I'd get so bored if this was the way I'd experience every day.
One of my favorite things about living in Colorado is getting all four seasons. Sometimes they arrive a little early, sometimes they overstay their welcome, and sometimes they all happen in the same day. I don't care how they come, I just love that we get them all and I LOVE the different lives I get to live throughout the year because of it.
Winter is cozy. It's my nesting period with fires, hot bevys, and snow falling outside while you're perfectly content to be inside. It's also snowboarding and ski hills. For some reason, I love that particular kind of exhaustion that sets in after spending an entire day outside in the cold. There is nothing quite like a bluebird Colorado ski day followed by a warm beverage on the side of the mountain. Add in the holidays and the clean, quiet beauty of fresh snow, and I am ALL in.
Then...I eventually become VERY ready for Spring.
Spring always feels like the world is waking up. Everything starts turning green, flowers appear, you see baby animals everywhere, and the sun suddenly feels warm again instead of merely bright. You start opening windows (if your allergies allow), people emerge from their caves, and those first warm days feel like a gift from Mother Nature.
Then...just as we've settled into spring, summer arrives and everything officially moves outside.
Summer is probably the most social season. There are festivals and concerts and patios and golf and travel and seemingly endless reasons to be anywhere other than inside our homes. Packing is insanely easy because everything weighs approximately nothing. The days are long, nights are warm, and there is always something going on. I love love love the energy of summer.
Then...around late August, I start eagerly anticipating fall.
Fall is my favorite season. Not by a little...by a LOT! Being that we are just getting started, expect to find me in a ridiculously good mood for the foreseeable future.
Colorado fall is nearly perfect. Crisp mornings, warm afternoons, and for a while everything is still green while the trees start showing off their colors. My garden is usually at its absolute peak just before it gives up, which makes the season a little bittersweet.
Fall is for Football (GO BIG RED!). It's Halloween and Thanksgiving and family. It's festivals, cooler hikes, brisk morning dog walks, and some of the best golf days of the entire year. It's warm drinks by the patio fire and the beginning of hot tub season. It's also layering season, which may be one of our greatest collective achievements because you can look cute while remaining prepared for approximately seven different temperatures.
I absolutely love how fall feels! There is still so much life happening outside, but everything starts slowing down...one day at a time. We know winter is coming, so there is an almost unconscious urge to squeeze every last moment out of these beautiful days while we still can.
That's what I love most about having four seasons. I love how they change the way we live. The force us to continuously practice our adaptation skills. My home changes with them, too. In winter, I want blankets and fires and cozy spaces everywhere. In spring, I want to clean everything, open windows, and start projects (so many projects). Summer pulls us out of our homes and into our neighborhoods, parks, patios, and backyards. And finally, fall somehow makes home feel especially good again, even while I'm trying to spend every possible minute outside.
I guess there is a real estate lesson buried in there somewhere. We spend so much time thinking about the house we want, but the life we get to live around it matters even more. Where we live determines what an ordinary Saturday could look like. It becomes part of our routines, our traditions, and our memories.
I know I don't want perpetual summer or perpetual winter. I want the change. I NEED the change. I want to miss something and then get excited when it comes back around. I want to pull out my snowboard and eventually put it away. I want to plant things, watch them grow, and then complain when I have 4,000 tomatoes. I want flip-flop season and boot season. I want patio season and fireplace season. I want to be sad when one ends and a little giddy when the next one begins.
Seasons are also a nice reminder we don't have to choose one version of our lives and stay there forever. Things change. Seasons change. WE change.
I say, bring on fall!! I love living in a place that has four seasons about as much as I love the way my two greatest loves look at each other. As you can see, that's quite a lot! ❤️😍
