Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

When you are not looking life rushes by.  Remember how when you were a child, it what seemed like centuries for Christmas to come.  Now It seems like by the time you get through one Christmas another is on it's heels.  When my boys were still children, people would say enjoy them while they are still little.  Fortunately, I really did enjoy them.

When we lived in Vermont, we would take treks into the woods.  One time we found a secret place that seemed designed just for us.  Up, up a hill through a meadow, into a woods to a place where fir trees grew.  Where if you ducked down under a branch, you would come upon an opening into a circle of trees. Their evergreen fragrant branches bent low forming walls.  The ground was covered in lush, green, deep moss.  This felt like a place of dreams where magic surely could happen in an enchanted Forest.  We sat down on the soft moss floor, and looked up to a roof of tree tops.  Everyone was quiet experiencing the magic of that special place.

There was a stream behind our house and on hot summer days the family would sit on the large stones with our feet in the water or swim in the icy cold swimming holes.  Afterwards we would feel cool no matter how hot the day.  No need for air conditioning.

There were times that we would walk up a hill to pick wild blackberries. One time on our property we found an old orchard of apple trees.  We picked a basket full of the apples even though we were bumpy and not perfect.  I peeled and cut and cooked those apples making some of the best apple sauce ever. 

In the winter the boys loved the snow, playing in the snow piles with their trucks just like they did in the dirt.  They both learned to ski, even Scott, who was three years old.  He would cry when he would fall down for me to come pick him up. Bundled up, how they loved the snow.

The first winter in Vermont.  After church service one of the local men brought his horse drawn sleigh and gave rides to the children who had never ridden on one before.  He gave our whole family a wonderful ride through the open fields.  Years later Chris would hire a sleigh for Melissa and himself, on their honeymoon in Vermont.  There was something about living in the cold north that gets into your blood and keeps us coming back.

Those three years were an adventure.  We bought and fixed up an old one room school house.  It had huge school windows that looked out across fields.  It was in these same fields that we saw our first and only Moose while we were living in Vermont.  We lower half of the fourteen foot ceilings and made an loft bedroom and bath plus over the original ceiling two small bedrooms for the boys.

We put a huge deck on the back looking over the woods.  I planted great ferns around the decking. Chris had a birthday party out there.