We had such a delightful Independence Day.
You'll notice I didn't say "perfect."
Just delightful.
Just delightful.
And that was perfect.
Carrie made red, white and blue scones for breakfast, drizzled with orange glaze. Mmm.
And after breakfast we finally came to a concensus about what we wanted to do for the holiday.
We had discussed going to the Cripple Creek gold mine (which cost a lot)
or going four-wheeling (which required a lot of unloading of hay off the flatbed trailer and loading and hitching of the trailer and all sorts of rigamarole).
We finally settled on driving to Cheyenne Mountain and taking a hike to St. Mary's Falls, which was a 6 mile hike.
But when we got to the parking area, it was packed, with vehicles in line waiting to find a spot.
So, trying not to be too disappointed, we drove on several miles to another road--
and to our great delight, we found a spot to park and a little road to hike back.
Pretty soon, we found this spot by a stream, where the boys quickly discovered lots of fish!
There were so many fish, and the little pools were so shallow, that the boys caught some with their bare hands!
As we were walking up the trail, I couldn't help thinking about a wedding that was going to be happening tomorrow, daughter of friends. And another wedding that evening, friends of Sam's at the firehouse. Pictures of all sorts of reunions and get-togethers and new "in-a-relationship"'s on Facebook.
My daughters and sons don't even have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Yet.
We're just going on a hike in the mountains together--wading in the stream and hiking up trails and catching fish with the boys' bare hands.
Jonathan and I are standing there watching our kids have fun,
just having a grand old time with a little bit of water and rocks and slippery, slimy fish darting about their legs.
We couldn't even make a hike to St. Mary's Falls happen, much less provide future spouses for our older children.
Our nineteen-year old daughter and her nineteen year old cousin Elisa are merrily going up trails, seeing a grouse, a buck, and wild strawberrries, and happily sticking flowers in Elisa's hair.
The boys are snatching and grabbing slimy, wiggly, fish by this big boulder.
We saw a beautiful, bright orange western tanager, and butterflies, and even a bat hanging upside down under the stream ledge. It hissed at Timmy when he was trying to catch a fish, and scared him.
He discovered it was a bat hanging upside down!
Bats of doubt and discontent and envy might like to hiss at us on our merry hike.
You learn to ignore them.
Instead, you choose trust and contentment and thankfulness and joy.
Which results in peace.
Jonathan and I kept looking at each other and grinning.
We didn't have to hike six miles to find joy.
It was right there beside us by the stream where our kids were playing happily.
Just us and God and the sunshine and fresh aspen leaves and blue sky and little fish and water trickling and black-eyed susans, and each other.
Sometimes the greatest joys are the simplest.
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