What's new and different

As I write this, it is raining. Rain! Wonderful, beautiful rain! It's driving us crazy this rain, coming down every day and making it hard to take the boys to the park or put out a "free box." But I do love it. And I've missed it. It rains SO very seldom in Ridgecrest, only a few times a year. Can you imagine the wildflowers you'd get if it rained like this there?

The white puffy clouds of morning look so innocent, so harmless. But by afternoon they are clumping together, joined by much darker puffy clouds rolling over the mountains to the west. And then the whole sky is dark, and we hear the first boom of thunder.

I thought the twins would be frightened of the rainstorms, because they were very nervous about thunder in Ridgecrest. But they've adjusted quickly. (Too quickly, maybe -- we still need to teach them about the dangers of lightning strikes, which are very real out here.) They still find the rain exciting, though, as do I.

What else is special about Boulder (to us desert rats, I mean)? Squirrels! There are no squirrels in Ridgecrest, only the occasional ground squirrel out in the desert, and that's an entirely different animal. The boys find squirrels fascinating.

Buses! Ridgecrest has a small transit system, and of course there were schoolbuses, but it's nothing compared to Boulder's fleet of wildly-colored buses with all their funny names (Skip, Hop, Jump, Dash, Bound, Bolt), plus all the regular buses with numbers, and the AB bus that goes to the Denver airport. Baby B in particular is very interested in the buses. (You can see a Bound bus in the photo above.)

Earthworms! After our first rain, the boys were amazed to see these worms all over the sidewalk. No earthworms in the desert. They are interested in all sorts of other creepy-crawlies too, such as pillbugs, mosquitoes, and "good spiders" (i.e., not black widows).

Crows! Every big black bird in Ridgecrest was a raven, but in Boulder most of them are crows, and of course they're smaller and make a different sound. The boys are amused by them, and interested in all the other new birds, such as spotted towhees and flickers. Even robins were not too common in the desert.

The parks! Ridgecrest had parks, and we made extensive use of them, at least during the spring and late fall. But Boulder has PARKS, and we've barely scratched the surface. If you include all the "greenways," you can wander all over the city on foot, going from park to park. And don't forget the trails, which we haven't even started on yet, due to all the rain. A few days ago we went to a park I'd never even heard of before, Arapahoe Ridge Park in east Boulder, otherwise known as the Rock Park.

What a cool place. It's next to an elementary school, and nestled into the midst of a neighborhood, with only a tiny parking area. Clearly, most people walk there. The playground consists of a small jungle gym, two baby swings, a small merry-go-round... and this great rock wall, with tunnels and secret passageways. Sooo fun for kids.

Ice cream! Ridgecrest had a Baskin-Robbins, which was walking distance from our house. You could also get Thrifty ice cream at Rite-Aid. But Boulder has SO many places to go for ice cream, TWO of which are an easy walk from our house. We go out for ice cream about every third night. (Though poor Baby B asks at every store, "Do they have Daiquiri Ice?" which was his favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor.)

So many things are different here, but I'm running out of exclamation points. What's odd about all this newness, though, is how fast the twins seem to be forgetting that they ever knew anything else. They almost never mention Ridgecrest, or their old daycare/preschool, or our neighbors, or our old house (Daiquiri Ice is one of the few exceptions). I can't believe they've forgotten it already, but five-year-olds seem to be mainly interested in the future.