Today

Today was a glorious day. Timothy had an unexpected holiday (well, a holiday that isn't since he has to make up the hours), so we took off to the mountains in all their fall glory. I tell you, the weather drops below 70 and I find myself singing and dancing and laughing and feeling HAPPY, and heading to the out-of-doors whenever possible. I LOVE THIS WEATHER!!!!

So, we drove to Big Cottonwood Canyon and did a 2.5 mile (roundtrip) hike. The kids did awesome despite the drizzly rain. I thought the weather was perfect and loved being up near the clouds. The sunlight shining through gold aspen leaves. Sigh. Someone should write a poem about it. Someone probably has. Someone should write a poem about it and then put it somewhere where I'll read it.

I have to say--sometimes I think I'm crazy for homeschooling. But today, watching Cowen bound around and leap over rocks and hide behind trees--I was so grateful he wasn't sitting behind a desk somewhere. Oh to be a boy on a mountaintop!! Someone should write a book about it. Oh yeah, Louis L'Amour has it covered. Watching Cowen find large fallen tree branches to throw down hills made me understand completely how caber tossing got started.

On the way home, Emeline got car sick in the canyon but even cleaning a car seat (WHY can't engineers design them for easy clean-up???) couldn't dampen my mood.

Tonight, in her personal bedtime prayer, Emeline said: "Thank you that Mom doesn't poison our food." Uh--yeah. Where in the world???

Which reminds me, another highlight of my day was when we were getting started on the hike and saw some ducks swimming toward us. Emeline, thrilled to her very core, squealed, "My duckie friends!!!!!!!!" I've never seen a girl who loves ducks or yellow the way Emeline does.

When we left the ducks to continue on our way, Eli yelled, "Bye, ducks!!" about thirty times. Hilarious. He also waved goodbye to every squirrel and chipmunk we saw. We saw a LOT of them.

Grand day. Now I must go to bed so tomorrow can be an equally grand day. Despite the to-do list. I hope you can also, very gratefully, say in your prayer tonight that no one is poisoning your food. And I hope that wherever you are, the weather has dipped below 70 so you too can feel like dancing and singing and running around in the beautiful outdoors.