Summer’s here! However, I still feel like we’re not fully celebrating it yet. For one thing, all last week, Ellie spent her mornings taking part in a VBS while Ethan would spend his days at Fox Hill Elementary practicing what kindergarten will be like in the fall.
As for this week though, I had been looking forward to it
quite a bit. You see, Ethan still is at Fox Hill each day. However, Ellie’s at
home with me. Over the past week, I had been planning out fun things for us to
do together. Among them were a trip to Savannah, an afternoon at Oceans of Fun,
some tennis, and likely a trip to the library. However, when Ethan woke up this
morning running a high fever which meant he couldn’t go to school. Instead of
Ellie and I having some kind of adventure, we instead found ourselves just
hanging out at the house all day. That being said, there’s still fun to be had
if one keeps their eyes open.
For this day, I had one big goal to complete which Ethan being
sick didn’t change. You see, since I worked on our deck last year, I’ve had a
ton of old boards laying around from the project that needed to be gotten rid
of. Therefore, I decided to take the first step toward making that a reality by
sawing up some of the longer ones so that they could actually fit in my car.
While Ethan slept this morning, I headed outside to the backyard
with Ellie in tow to begin my project. I started by picking up a longer board
and carrying it down my patio stairs and towards the front yard. While I
expected Ellie to just kill time by playing on her swing, she instead picked up
a smaller board and followed me around front. In fact, with every trip I made
to the front yard, she was right there behind me carrying one or two boards of
her own.
Eventually, we had all the boards around front, and I began
setting up my workstation so that I could safely cut the boards down. Finally,
it was time to saw. Before I started, I gave Ellie strict instructions on how
to keep both herself and me safe while I cut. Lucky for me, she’s great at
following directions so there were no problems. On a couple of occasions, I
actually had her hold the board so that I could cut safely. Don’t worry; she
was quite a way off from where I was cutting.
One of my favorite things about our project was seeing how
excited Ellie gets about the smallest things. As I made my way through our pile
of lumber, I looked over at one point to see Ellie excitedly watching the
ground. I set down my saw and made my way over to Ellie to see what she was
looking at. As it turned out, she had found a garter snake and was watching it
crawl about our driveway. It eventually disappeared into the grass but that
didn’t stop Ellie from finding one of its snakeskins amongst the boards. I’m sure
that it comes as no surprise to many people that she decided to keep that skin
for her collection of interesting things that she finds in nature.
While our day obviously didn’t go according to plan, it’s
still special to know that Ellie and I can make memories and have fun just
doing everyday life together in the front driveway. Honestly, those small
moments are probably some of the longest lasting memories that we’ll have
together, too.
#DaddyWrite
Surely hope poor Ethan recovered fast from his illness! And was great that you and Ellie had a good day working together,,,, I enjoy hearing about your activities and adventures with these two dear kiddos! 😍. Barb.
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