Family Love

One word to describe Dad's birthday party weekend?
Aah
Watch the kids try new and different adventures (crisco water slide... off of trampoline and into ditch.) Swings, perfectly engineered to dip little one's feet into water.

Sit and talk with the sisters, compare pinterest ideas... and pipe dreams of the big brick building we would turn into some sort of women's retreat- exercise, crafts, food, book store... I don't think we realized that we were just describing Dad & Mom's place on a larger scale.  
Laugh.  At the kids, at Caleb & Hayley trying to best one another with their ongoing rivalry, with each other.
The happy tears that there's been major attitude breakthrough with The Kamie.  And that 'shared feeling' cuz everyone knows what a tough time we've had, and they notice the difference, and they tell me...

We know this euphoria is here. And we enjoy it. We don't know how long things will be this good. The little orange dot on the family thumbprint tree... which isn't a thumbprint. The urgency to take another picture, hug each niece and nephew, write goofy saying on the basement walls, listen to a sister, put up with football games blaring from three vehicles.  Let fireworks wake up the two year old.  It's this feeling that we know life is tenuous, people are fragile, relationships are even more fragile. We've seen broken. So we handle gently. We may have to walk through the shadows in the valley with another brother or sister. This side of heaven there will be hurt, and temper tantrums, and work (and silage bagging), but the fellowship, the love... that gives us the taste of the other.  So that's really what the weekend felt like-- just a little bitty part of heaven.