My Roots.

Every couple of months, I need to get me and my boys up HOME to some wide open spaces, some fresh air, some quiet, and some good old fashioned red neck fun. This past weekend was one of those occasions.

HOME is:

:: Wide, wide, wide open spaces. This is the view from my parent's driveway. It's quiet and the air smells fresh and clean. Seriously. It smells different up there. I love it.

:: Neighbors and family members who stop over for dooryard visits. Or, in this case my Uncle Keith who drove for two hours to come to breakfast. And shoot the breeze in the driveway while Dad cooked bacon on his grill. Good times.

:: HOME is also playing Cribbage with Dad and Kev....

:: ...and soundly tromping them - despite Dad's best cheating efforts. How's that little rhyme go? Cheat cheat never beat. That's right. I was the red pegs, if anyone is wondering...

:: HOME is my sweet little country church where I grew up and where practically everyone is related. And home is sitting there and remembering all of the antics that we pulled while we were little and wanting to pull them all over again just because we're all sitting next to each other.

:: HOME is also shooting varmints out the window from the living room - right before church, because that's what we do up there sometimes. It just feels right.

:: HOME is cousins who are also best friends who make the time to come and see me everytime I'm up and who love on my boys and wind them right up tight. Home is playing Mafia with them and laughing our heads off over truly foolish conversations. And eating and eating and eating...

:: HOME is hotdog roasts in the driveway with all the fixin's on the back of Dad's tailgate. Again, it just feels right.

:: And HOME is always four-wheeling because it makes us happy. No matter the weather - as long as the wheeler and the wagon behind can get where we need to go...well, we get there. And HOME is looking as redneck and as Beverly Hillbilly-ish as possible...just because it's fun.

::...Well, Little Red Riding Hood - I mean, Aunty Sharon - didn't have so much fun because she sat in the muddy spot of the wagon and was less than impressed with the mud bath that she received. She was a pretty good sport, though, and rallied after her initial frustration!

:: And HOME is Dad always finding some sort of craft or project for the boys to work on. This weekend it was a signpost that they routered (routed?) and sanded.

:: Um....hmmmm...not sure about my middle child's creative expression, but he was proud of it. Especially when we told him what it "said." He assured us that it's exactly what he wanted to say. More power to him...

:: And HOME is Dad making my most favorite thing in the whole wide world, the only thing that I really crave and can't get enough of - his homemade brown sugar fudge.

:: I seriously might have a problem. I was so excited to eat the stuff that when he declared it to be done, I pulled the candy thermometer out of the bubbling frothy-ness and went to lick it off, and promptly blistered my upper lip. Kev thinks I have issues. "He's crazy," said the wife who, along with her father, hid about ten pieces up in the cupboard for no-one to find but us....

Yes. My roots.
It's good to go back. It's good for my boys to live it as well.

And it's so good to be with family - the wild and the crazy, the silly and the serious.
It's what makes us -- "us."
And I LOVE that.