Part of our “unplugging”process was purging ourselves of the mountain of stuff we’d piled up at Fox Drive. We could just feel the weight slide off our shoulders as the Rescue Mission took the last load away. There isn’t a whole lot of room for stuff in our new home, no boat garage or cedar closet to fill floor to rafter. Brian’s brother Bob’s “dome home” in Williamsville provided a great staging ground to ready us for our new nomadic life.

Before setting off for points far off we just had to show our new home to our Fox Drive neighbors and make good on a promise we had made to two little neighbor girls to take them on a weekend RV adventure. Nothing like driving your new house past your old house. Strange. We were able to see Cheyanne and Chelsea, Grandma Mazie and Grandpa Howard, Tanya and Brianna and Heather and Cameron. For the record: Cameron did NOT enjoy the earsplitting air horn of the RV and was too scared to come on board no matter how hard Jack coaxed. Sorry little buddy!

Fox Drive was a wonderful place to live. Each of us carries the fondest memories of living there: The neighbors we met, the block parties each October, sledding down the street on snowy days, catching fire-flies in the back yard on hot summer nights…Many people we lived with on Fox Drive will remain dear friends through life.

Halloween ’99 with Riley Jane & Allison and ’05 with Tanya & Brianna

Snow day fun with Cheyanne & Cameron

Chelsea, Ben & Jack in backyard sandbox

It was great fun stealing Cheyanne and Chelsea away for a weekend and heading to St. Louis where we stayed at a campground on the famed Route 66 near Six Flags . We enjoyed a day at Six Flags but my fondest memories are of the kids just being wild and free, playing outside at the campsite. They discovered a creek under a train trestle where they spent hours catching crawdads, tadpoles and frogs.

Now that beats the heck out of Six Flags if you ask me…but I’m not 8. I just love watching kids being kids; getting lost in their imaginations, creating adventure as they go. One fun idea leads to another and another after that. I used to be like that. Sometimes I feel sad that I’ve lost that sense of playful abandon. Childhood is playhood. And so it should be…for as long as possible.

This world has a way of putting the big squeeze on a person. Life gets so busy and chaotic that it seems to live you instead of the other way around. I’m not quite sure who is to blame for the insane schedules that families keep these days, but it seems that between work, school and “extra-curriculars”, the fewest number of hours in the day are spent with each other and the greater number of precious hours are spent with…others. I rather like spending time with my little monkeys and I’m kinda jealous over our time together as a family. There was a time, in the not-so-distant-past, when I wondered if Brian and I were ever going to have children to share this amazing life with. Then to have TWO perfect little boys!

Ben and Jack are such reminders of God’s faithfulness to us!. We don’t want to squander a minute of time we’ve been given. I feel blessed to disconnect from the tangle for awhile in an effort to slow life down and make our precious moments together count. To tell the world, “Hey, you ain’t the boss of us!”