Grace in Small Things, October 22, 2012

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

We went over to the other side of the state (Colorado's Front Range, which is where I grew up and went to college) this past weekend...here are a few of the lovely things that happened:

1) In Boulder on Friday, my husband otherwise occupied, I took the kids to the creekside park by the library...the library's beautiful...and you can see the Flatirons from there...and the kids saw ducks for the first time...they (the kids) were mesmerized...so fun. :)

2) Saw a bunch of friends, which was so great. Here's Sissy with Dwight...I used to babysit his two boys way back when (college) and the whole family...they've been such dear friends ever since:

Actually, one of my favorite memories ever...out on Cape Cod with this family (they have a summer home there), this is after I'd moved away but I spent a week with them and we drove out on the beach every day, cooler full of drinks and sandwiches, I taught the kids to surf that summer. Anyway, we'd gone to dinner at a friend's camp one night and the old army vehicle, open aired...there was no one on the beach and Dwight said to his 10-year-old son, "Do you want to drive?" and his son was so excited and Dwight gently coached him as he drove along the sand tracks on the beach, me and his brother and their sandy dog in the back, the night warm, the stars shining, our bellies full of lobster. Such a simple memory but so, so precious. I always think of that old Jack Johnson song with the line, "Stars were just the holes to Heaven" when I think of that night.

And here's Sissy with the daughter of friends of mine from San Francisco who now live in Denver: 

I have a great Jack Johnson memory with her (the wife), too, going to see him in concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco, one of the best concerts ever. At the Fillmore, they hand out posters after each concert and I have mine from that night framed, kind of symbolic of that and all our other fun nights out together (and there were many).

3) The kids traveled so well...4+ hours in the car each way, different beds each night, their routine totally messed up and barely a complaint...they are so amazing. Oh, and they are teething too...you can definitely feel a tooth coming in on each of them, and kind of see it...there's some discoloration in the area at any rate... They were such troupers...

4) As always so, so lovely to see my brother Ben. Actually, I had kind of a weird thing happen. He's been in Mexico and is all scruffy with a few day's beard growth, which I don't ever think I've seen on him. Anyway, one day he came around the corner and I thought for a split second he was our brother who died. That's the first time that's happened, and I think it was because of the scruff, which my brother who died sported often. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn't really upsetting, just really, really strange...

5) This is the leading cause of traffic jams in Evergreen, CO, which is where I lived when I was little. Love it.

XOXO