Now you can come visit! And other happy things.

You haven't come to visit me.

It's fine. 

You're in good company. LOTS of people don't come to visit us.

I'm not bitter.

But it's time you do. For reals. Here's why.

1. You need to see me. Because we are good friends and you miss me. A lot.
2. You want an excuse to feel good about your life. (Take one look around here and you'll feel really grateful for your HOA and your city parks and your local Costco, and, well, soft grass.)
3. You want to see the Caverns. Because they are super cool and you need to cross it off your bucket list. And you may even want to take one of the extra awesome, elite, knotted-rope-climbing, body-squishing guided tours.
4. You want to come see our secret sand dunes that we just discovered. 

Well. Someone discovered them earlier. They actually are some kind of state park. It's just that no one seems to know it's there. Brad found them or was told about them (I'm not exactly clear) when he started his new job way out in the boonies of the desert. 

So one day after work Brad packed our propane stove and some hot dogs, chips and OREO's (yes, we're fancy), and drove us out to this lonely and amazingly fun spot. It's a good thing it was fun because he forgot the matches to light the camp stove. Nobody really noticed. We were too busy doing this:

{I could not stop taking sand ripple/footprint pictures. I just thought it was so pretty. I know. I'm ridiculous. You can make fun of me... if... you come for a visit.}

{And... the light in this one is horrible. Man, I want an off-camera flash so bad...}

{Climbing to the top is really hard.}

{But jumping off and sliding down is a blast!}

I know. You really want to come now, right? I'll clean the guest room.

A little triumph

I had been listening to a Mormon Channel podcast. Julie B. Beck said that when her kids were young, she never made them stop reading to go to sleep. She believed that a reading child stayed out of trouble.

I decided that I agreed.

So tonight, I put Grace and Claire in bed and handed Grace her book. I left the room, kept on the light, and shut the door.

I expected to hear the silence of one reading brain and a sleeping one. Instead I heard complete chaos. Laughing, squealing, wrestling, screams of delight. Nothing conducive to reading. And usually I would probably yell at them. In a very harsh mommy voice I would probably shout, "Be quiet, and go to sleep!!" (Not that there's ever screaming in this household.)

But I thought about Sister Beck and I thought that I probably wanted to encourage sisterly affection as much as I wanted to encourage reading. And they seemed happy. So I stayed mostly quiet.

Several minutes later, Grace shuffled down the hall with a smirk. "Mom. You know what I just realized?"

"What did you realize, Grace?"

"That even if your sister's littler than you, you can have a lot of fun playing with her." And she shuffled away.

And man, they made my month.