A “Best” is THE best

As I sit at my computer this morning, there are ominous piles of paper stacked around me. Piles stacked dangerously high. If my desk was a ski resort, the slopes would be closed to protect the safety of visitors.

In other parts of the house, clean dishes diminish, while dirty clothes accumulate. I see the cat. tired of the hunger pangs, has resorted to planting crops in the dust layers around the house in hopes of producing a quick crop.

If you’re a parent, you get it. There’s always something to do. Usually too much. If we had 30 hours in a day, we still couldn’t get it all done. 

And yet with so much to do, I still find it surprising, almost amazing, when the simplicity of life can cut through the chaos and grab my attention.

And make me smile.

We had a snow day earlier this year. Snow days may not mean much to you. But around these parts, we not only measure snow and ice, we go so far as to measure the amount of frost we get. (Read this with a southern drawl – “By jimminy, that’s the biggest frost we’ve had around here since I was a young’un and had to walk five miles to school”

So with two (count em, TWO) snow days, my son was a tad bit excited.

He wanted to build a snowman. He wanted to have a snowball fight. He wanted sledding, and snow forts, and if he’d had skis at that moment, I’m sure he would have wanted to install a lift in our back yard.

But I had work. Work that I needed to do. Piles that I needed to diminish, and other piles that I needed to undiminish. (that’s a word, right?)

But how do you turn down an 11-year-old who is dying to peg you with a snowball.

So I pushed the work aside, bundled up, and headed out.

We had a great day. We threw snowballs at each other. We ran around like we had frogs crawling in our pants. We went to my office where the snow was even deeper and made even BIGGER snow ball to hurl. My snow made a snow angel. He kicked snow. Threw snow at icicles. We even tried to play snow baseball.

At home, we build a fire, and listened to the cackles and the pops as we slowly thawed out. We cooked pancakes and bacon for lunch – a “treat” my son had never experienced. And later we watched a movie as we rested from the day’s adventures.

At the end of it all, the piles were still there. But so were the memories.

And in case I hadn’t realized how great those could be, my son reminded me. “Dad, that was one of the best days of my life.”

Yeah. It really was.