Spring Planting

Springtime in the Rockies arrived a bit early this year. With February days stretching into the 60s a few times, Cameron went out and bought a new rototiller and started planting some cold-weather crops. Gardening is exciting. We plant seeds, water, weed, cultivate, and dream of what our harvest will be.

In February we also had another Cupid Week with our family. The week before Valentine's Cameron took Abby and Grace to the annual Daddy Daughter dance, and Jake took me and Grace out for dinner. (Cameron made sure Jake had enough cash and instructed him to open my doors, and Jake was a thoughtful date. It was sweet.)

Then the Sunday before Valentine's Cameron and I opened our Cupid Week store, and each kid was invited in one at a time to draw a sibling's name and choose a couple items to give them during the week. We also talked to the kids at dinner a couple nights about other nice things they could do for each other as the week progressed.

As anything goes with a young family, the week had highs and lows. The kids were wonderful at sharing their treats with each other. And they would delightedly go tell each other, "Go look under your pillow!" when a treat had just been planted. But there were other moments when it seemed that all anybody cared about was consuming the most sugar possible instead of showing love for each other. A couple times I felt like throwing my hands in the air and scrapping it for next year.

Then the night before Valentine's Day I was reading to the girls in their room when I spotted this note that had been left on Grace's bed:

Sorry for the fuzzy pic...the heart reads "I love you...you are super"

Families are like gardens. We plant, nourish, love, pray, hope, and dream...and every once in a while our seedlings do even better than we thought.