Seriously, spring couldn't come quickly enough. I can't wait for warmer weather.  I'm not one who likes the cold, and this winter was full of it.  So last week when the temperature rose, I started to get excited.

I remembered that I wrote a similar article almost two years ago.  Just like then, my oldest girl knows that spring begins later today.  We now have three girls excited to ride bikes, and just like then, we have a new baby to take for walks.

I look forward to going on trips to get ice cream, and teaching E to ride her bike without training wheels.

Life is (still) good.

February is cold in Michigan – have I said that before?  2009 has been especially brutal.  I woke up the other day to -8ºF.  So far, it has risen above freezing less than half the days this month, and all but four days in January were below 32°F as well.

My mom came up north from Dallas last week.  She went to C's school for Grandparents' Day on the 12th. We had a good visit with her, and I'm pretty sure she had a good time—particularly with her granddaughters.

In my last post about my not-so-rapid climb to the top of Google when searching for "Jason Boyette" I forgot to mention that I was also recently named as one of the many Joomla people on Twitter.

David Towers posted this article on his site GoodWebPractices.com naming dozens of people that develop web sites using the Joomla Content Management System (which I do), who are also using their Twitter accounts to tweet about all that good stuff (which I do, too).

I'm not sure if that's what helped me get to #1 on Google's search results or not, but it is nice to know that people are reading what you write.

How do you explain to someone else how special your own children are to you?

We tell stories of nice things they say or do for us.  We brag about how smart they are, or how good they are at sports.

Last Thursday my 4-year-old daughter E hugged me for no reason as soon as I walked in the door from work.  That is something special.  You know, I could use one of those every day.

Later on that night, I fired up the snowblower to clean the driveway before the 6–9" of more snow we were expecting for Friday.  As I plowed back and forth, I looked up and saw all three of my big girls hopping up and down happily in the living room.  I waved, and they waved back.

As big as their smiles were, mine was bigger.  I was happy because they were enjoying the simple pleasure of watching me "throw" snow all over the yard.

Kelly later told me that my 2-year-old daughter M was shouting, "You can do it, Daddy!"  She watches way too much Dora.

Of course, your children are special to you simply because they're your children.  We write here about them so that you can get a sneak peek into how wonderful they are.