Tulip Time.

You wouldn't know it by looking outside on this cloudy, 43 degree day, but today is the first day of spring. Time for tulips. Or better yet, a trip to somewhere warmer and lovelier, where fields of brilliantly colored tulips grow by giant windmills, creating instant adorableness. Perhaps a little biking excursion through Tulip Central - the Netherlands. I went there with a friend when I was 18 and it was fantastic, although I was not there in spring so didn't get to see the tulip fields. But we did bike through a forest in the pouring rain to get to a tiny "pancake house"..a much more charming, fairytalesque destination than a roadside IHOP, especially since there were windmills everywhere. And we ate Nutella, chocolate smoosh bread and eggs out of cute little egg cups for breakfast, popped into adorable little cafes in the even more adorable villages for coffee and pastries, biked to incredible farmer's markets to pick up fresh veggies and meats to cook for dinner on our own little hot plates, kind of like fondue but better and ate about a million freshly baked stroopwafels - prettymuch the best things ever. (We tried to bring some home to our families but ate almost the whole bag on the plane.) And that's not even counting our time in Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels, or the strange cassette tape we received from a Dutch teen named Remko who dreamt of being a hot air balloon pilot, loved Mc Donald's and asked us for a tape back detailing what was happening on "Days Of Our Lives," asking the especially pressing question  "and how is little Eric??" I need to go back there stat, preferably during tulip time.

Or we can all just sit in MN and patiently wait until the snow melts and buds take their sweet time forming on the trees so that this state is once again pretty and not a frozen tundra for a few months. Le sigh...