The Good Life...

I love my parents. I love to visit the home where I grew up. I love being a mother. I love combining all of these marvelous gifts from God into one afternoon! Saturday afternoon we celebrated my father's much anticipated retirement. More anticipated by whom, my Dad, my Mom, my brother and I, or his Grandsons, is yet to be seen... On Sunday, we wasted no time in getting Dad up to the camp for a huge, juicy, grilled steak, fresh sweetcorn, and The Boy's first fishing lesson. The shocking truth: we filled the entire van with gear, clothes, pack-and-plays, bed-rails, toys, food, lovies, binkies, fishing poles, and an excersaucer for good measure, to travel 30 minutes for one afternoon of fun. Had it not started to downpour the moment the steak hit the grill we would still be at the camp for a slumber party...

Perhaps the most special part of the day for me was to watch my Dad teach my son how to fish. Now, I'm no sissy, I can hook a worm with the best of them. And as the fish continued to evade capture and steal worms from my Dad's eager line I surprised even myself and fought back the urge to show the boys how a fish is really caught. Instead, I hid behind my camera and let my son have his "dude time" with his GrandBob. I grew up in a very outdoorsman kind of family and to see our family traditions of fishing, hiking, cookouts, campfires, camping, all being passed onto my children with the loving and attentive help of my parents is truly a gift to my heart.

The Boy will no doubt be wanting to adorn every dish at every meal from now on with candles, since tonight we celebrated my Dad's birthday as well, and he will probably be asking if Santa uses a GPS system too since we hid Dad's birthday presents out in the woods and made him use his retirement gift, a GPS system, to go find them... I definitely see "geo-cache'ing" in the future with the boys. This is just a glimpse of the very special memories made this weekend as our family embarks on another chapter of our lives - "Dad's retired... Now we can go tent camping in the rain ANY day of the week!"