Each year, as the temperatures drop and days get shorter, we tend to, quite literally, make plans to hibernate for the winter. All the heavy blankets come out, the curtains get drawn, and we spend a few months focusing on projects at home. Usually, by mid-March, we are crawling in our skin ready to get out again. We live in Alabama, so generally spring comes early and the weather just begs for us to go explore!

One of the brief moments this spring where it wasn’t absurdly wet..So you know we hit the trail! 

Somehow, 2019 did not get the memo. Is has been cold, dreary, rainy, and every combination of the three this spring, and we have definitely felt the effects in the form of a ” why don’t we stay in this weekend” funk. Don’t get us wrong, we enjoy the break (and our bank account loves it more), but it certainly feels like a hibernation that is out of our control.

Most of our hikes have looked like this. Eerie, damp, and great if you’re in a horror film!

Chris’s office recently moved to a location closer to where we live, and Angie finally got approved to work-at-home again after taking a promotion last year that required her to go back to the office for training. So we have been completely living it up as home-bodies despite our normal desire to get out and explore. We’ve at least taken advantage of the time at home to make some much needed improvements with a new dining room table and curio, plus some other updates in other rooms and lots of work done outside as well.

(We’re very proud to have a nice, adult looking dining room, indulge us in this one)

At some point during this pathetic excuse for spring, we decided to salvage what we could and got a membership at our local zoo. We absolutely love the zoo, but with so many other places we want to visit, we usually only make it over once a year to volunteer at their halloween event. It’s been a few years since we went as regular guests so we have really enjoyed seeing all the new expansions and exhibits. So between the zoo and a couple of small local hiking trails, we’ve managed to still enjoy being out and about without having to plan or cancel due to weather.

We even had a little staycation in March and hosted Angie’s parents for a few days of local tourism. We made a day trip to Atlanta to see the aquarium there, went to the zoo, and tried a few new restaurants around town. We had planned to get away to the mountains or beach, but the days we had off had terrible weather forecasts, so we knew it would be easier to stay home and do things strategically timed around the rain. It still worked out nicely, time with family is still a vacation, even if you aren’t going anywhere.

We got out of the state! If only for a few hours, it still counts!

Still, we are so excited to emerge from hibernation. It’s slowly coming, and thanks to a big trip in June, we hadn’t budgeted for much this spring anyway, so it hasn’t been a total loss. We aren’t usually big on travel during the summer months, but this year is most likely going to prove to be an exception, for no other reason than to catch up after this late start!