The Summer Has Started, Bring On The Outdoor Fires.

    The air is warm, with a light breeze scented with lilac.  The birds are chirping.  You can hear the bees buzzing away at the lilac blooms.  We have had our dinner of hamburgers on the deck.  My shoulders have gradually slid down from their perpetual position attached to my ears.  Turns out they were not attached to my ears after all.  In other words it's the first long week-end of the summer season.  I'm ready summer, bring it on.

    

    The summer although not according to the calendar is here.  We have had our first fire of the year.  I love our backyard fires.  It is something that is so much fun to do and it brings us closer as a family.
My life is stressful.  I have more than my fair share on my plate, and there are times that I wish I could just run away from it all (if you see my Prince Edward County blogs you will see a couple of run away from it all days).  I dearly wish that I could just snap my fingers and live the life I see on the TV shows (not the reality shows, thank God I do not live the life of reality shows).  I can't run away, not for more than a few hours, it's all there when I get back.  What I can do is cherish what I do have, cherish what is right in my life.  It is not an easy task the half full glass mentality, but I try.  Although my life is full of stress and hurdles,  I also know how very blessed that I am.  Sometimes it takes something as innocent and easy as a back yard fire to remind me just how very blessed that I am.

    We build the fire and wait.  When that fire is just right, out come the hot dogs (cut into spider dogs) and then the marshmallows / S'mores.  When all of the snacks are eaten then the questions begin.

We all take a turn to ask a question.  There are the standard questions "If you had a million dollars, what would you buy?"  "Where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world?"  "If you could be a super power what would it be?"  There are also new questions, like tonight Grace asked "What would you do for our community if you could do anything you wanted?"  It was a surprising question with surprising answers.  They each took a few minutes to really think about what they would do that would improve the lives of people in our community.  I expected "Build a water park" or "free candy for everyone." What surprised me was that each of the kids thought of something that they would do that would help people in our community that are less fortunate.  Maybe we're doing something right after all.

It is nice to have a full house.

    It costs wood to have a fire.  The rewards are priceless.  We have time.  Time that is uninterrupted by phone calls, by television, by video games, just beautiful time.  When my kids grow up I don't think they will remember that the bills all got paid.  I don't think that they will remember what their favourite television show was at this point in time.  What I think they will remember is how important family is to us.  I hope that they will remember just how much we love them.

If you are wondering what the heck this thing is, its a spider dog.

You just cut the hot dogs into into quarters.  Then skewer the hot dog and cook it.
 There you have a spider dog!

I'm running out of time here kids.  I need your help.  It takes you two minutes to click that little pink button, and scroll down to my blog, and click the yellow vote tab.  Easy!