Out and about

Accidentally matching at the zoo, standing in line for coffee, thrilling ourselves with horses on sticks that go round and round.

More snow in February

A Snow Day

Today we woke up to our first storm of 2019. Snow came for the first time and your dad left on a trip for the first time since you were born โ€” giving us a lot to think about. The day was a little adventurous but mostly it was a lot less warm. 

I took you outside and set you down and you got real quiet like the snow. You smiled a little but only at first. Then we watched everything be still. Then you looked so serious about it, I had to tell you it wouldnโ€™t stay that way. 

Snow melts, and heโ€™ll be back. 

That time it started snowing during Kyle's Birthday Party!

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โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†โ…โ†

Grandpa Jim's Service

โ€œI want to be like my Dad.โ€ -Mike Dunn

Wally & Wes Wear Stripes

<3 These guys.

10 years since you walked me home from school

To  befriend someone is to become acquainted with their mind. To agree to walk side by side with their sentiments and keep beseeching, "show me". To search out their thoughts and see what trails they've wandered and which ones they've avoided. It's to become familiar with the places they say seem dark and impenetrable, and to patiently say, "I see that darkness, I have darkness too." It's to move with them โ€” speeding at their speed and slowing at their slow. It's sitting quiet and still at the edges of their cerebral and emotional maps and dreaming together that the page could continue, perhaps. It's apologizing when you trip over the roots that have overgrown some paths. It's marveling at all the landscapes you discover in your friend.

If falling in love is free-falling down in an unexpected and destined ecstasy, becoming friends is the intentional sweaty trudge up a mountain for a view few live to see.

Not one day have I ever regretted our climb towards friendship. Not one day have I lamented traversing your mind โ€” first.

I say rather to those just getting started, if you're going to fall in love, do it on a mountain top, like I did.

Huddle against the hurtling chill

the freezer breeze brings its own kind

of charm,

candles in the night

early dark and slower Dawn

Christmas, cinnamon, steam

and all the hope we need to carry on.

Little Wallybug

When I was little my mom called me and my siblings โ€œwallerbugsโ€ when we couldnโ€™t sit still and would move all over the place on her lap. These days, Iโ€™m starting to think thatโ€™s a great little name for one of my favorite nephews, since every time he sees Wesley, he wallers all over him with affection and cuddles.

For my nephew, Hudson

Some stories

have dying 

in them.

Not all stories.

Today's story did.

Some stories

you will make,

some stories

will be made for you.

All stories 

will shape you.

Some stories

have dying

in them.

All stories

have living

in them.

Most stories

have living

and then dying.

One story

has dying

and then living.

Keep looking

for the story

that has dying

and then living

and living

and living.