Some things that parents do really stick.
Sometimes that knowledge is what keeps me going in a world of eye-rolling and mother-ignoring.
I know I did it to my parents too.
The big eye roll when my mom played her classical music.
The sigh that we had to do our jobs AGAIN.
The "happies" and "sads" at the dinner table.
Yes, I do it all with my kids now.
Because it's part of me after all those years.
I loved that this summer a bunch of my brothers took their kids and headed up to our old stomping grounds in Oregon.
We built this thing with our own blood and sweat and tears many, many summers ago:
(more details on that back HERE)
And those crazy couple summers up there with no other human being aside from our family smack dab in the middle of the wilderness really stuck.
My brothers loved it enough that they worked out a plan to take their own kids up there.
(If I wasn't in and out of that place so much I would have tagged along...the pictures they shared of that trip made me drool to do it next year.)
It's just a plot of dirt up in Oregon.
The cabin isn't much to look at. It's been taken over by packrats, and one wall is about to topple over.
But there are golden memories oozing out of that thing like nobody's business. It wasn't an expensive vacation to Europe or a fancy hotel...we were living in tents and a tee pee (for reals) and most of the time we had a complete layer of dirt covering us from head to toe.
But that trip seeped into our hearts and united us. Taught us to work. Taught us to love. Taught us to slow down.
So much that those boys put in all the effort to repeat it.
They didn't build a cabin this time...or even try to fix the one we built (I think it's past help). They started anew.
They built a little treehouse, and a slack-line.
And just like our trip all those years ago wove golden threads in our family tapestry, I think these kids own golden memories are pretty vibrant already.
They hammered trees, threw rocks down the gully, hiked to our old family stand-bys..."Looking-glass gorge," "The Grassy Knoll," and the burned down "hollow tree." Here's a little snippet from Tal:
Sometimes that knowledge is what keeps me going in a world of eye-rolling and mother-ignoring.
I know I did it to my parents too.
The big eye roll when my mom played her classical music.
The sigh that we had to do our jobs AGAIN.
The "happies" and "sads" at the dinner table.
Yes, I do it all with my kids now.
Because it's part of me after all those years.
I loved that this summer a bunch of my brothers took their kids and headed up to our old stomping grounds in Oregon.
We built this thing with our own blood and sweat and tears many, many summers ago:
And those crazy couple summers up there with no other human being aside from our family smack dab in the middle of the wilderness really stuck.
My brothers loved it enough that they worked out a plan to take their own kids up there.
(If I wasn't in and out of that place so much I would have tagged along...the pictures they shared of that trip made me drool to do it next year.)
It's just a plot of dirt up in Oregon.
The cabin isn't much to look at. It's been taken over by packrats, and one wall is about to topple over.
But there are golden memories oozing out of that thing like nobody's business. It wasn't an expensive vacation to Europe or a fancy hotel...we were living in tents and a tee pee (for reals) and most of the time we had a complete layer of dirt covering us from head to toe.
But that trip seeped into our hearts and united us. Taught us to work. Taught us to love. Taught us to slow down.
So much that those boys put in all the effort to repeat it.
They didn't build a cabin this time...or even try to fix the one we built (I think it's past help). They started anew.
They built a little treehouse, and a slack-line.
They hammered trees, threw rocks down the gully, hiked to our old family stand-bys..."Looking-glass gorge," "The Grassy Knoll," and the burned down "hollow tree." Here's a little snippet from Tal:
And a little time lapse of the tree-house-building project from Eli:
They came back to Bear Lake covered in layers of dirt with huge smiles stretched across their faces.
Those boys beamed with a glow that the satisfaction of hard work and serious quality time together bring. The kids' eyes shone as they recounted their adventures.
Adventures that created memories they won't soon forget.
Yes, some things parents do really stick.
And it doesn't have to be somewhere in the wilderness of Oregon. We can create some kind of adventures in our own back yard. It's just about "being" together.
Something tells me maybe those kids will be back one day with their own kids building who-knows-what, faces glowing with excitement.
But before then I better get up there with my girls :)