Beautiful, Beautiful Bluebonnets

When we were headed over the bridge to our Easter Egg Hunt last month, I saw them out of the corner of my eye and gasped.  BLUEBONNETS?  Growing wild?  Here????  I'd only ever seen them in pictures, but there they were, like a blue pool in the center of the park's tallest trees.

I'm a sucker for any great big swath of flowers.  Any color, any height, any type.  I just want to be *IN* them, with the kids, and my trusty Canon too.  It's like submerging in nature, walking where fairies tread, communing with God.
It never fails to take my breath away.

The bluebonnets were beautiful, but I had so much to do; the egg hunt, Easter, healing from my awful chest cold, getting the house ready and getting packed in time to leave for Las Vegas.  Besides, my camera lenses were both broken so photos were a no-go.  I resigned myself to the fact that there was a season for everything, and that Spring 2012 was not my season to dance among the bluebells.  I thought about them often, figuring that they were probably already spent for the season.

But the day before we were leaving for Vegas, Ben's teacher Miss Janet casually mentioned in her perfect British accent,  "If you get a chance to go around the bend, the bluebonnets are so beautiful!  The children had so much fun in them, and they won't be around for more than another day or two".

Well, you know I had to make it happen don't you?  You don't often get a second chance so blatantly tossed your way!   We were going to the park at sunset some way, some how.

After dinner, I just threw the kids in the car - I didn't even wash faces.  They were filthy, dressed like orphans, and completely disheveled.  But the light was fading and I had no time to worry about that.  This was about catching the magic, and the magic wasn't going to wait for me to brush teeth and hair.

I'm so glad we went.  It was AWESOME.

The sun faded fast, but the magic was there alright.  Ben offered Molly a bloom...

And she offered him a kiss in return...

(I swear I did not stage this!  I was holding my breath thanking the heavens that I went and shelled out the bucks for a new lens that morning!)

He was ambivalent about the kiss.

But in the end, he must have decided he liked it, because he snuck up behind her and gave her a kiss back on her neck while she wasn't looking.

Seriously.  This is what it's *ALL* about.  THESE are the KAIROS moments.  The ones that make time stand still.  The ones that enable you to diffuse the seventeenth argument of the day, or sweep the kitchen floor for the gazillionth time, knowing that you'll be doing it again, and again, and again.  To spend all day giving of yourself to your family and CHOOSE, deliberately to do it again the next day, and the day after that.  Even if you screw it up on a regular basis.  These are the moments that make you want to keep going.

That's Ben's preschool in the background.  And this is his playground.  Instead of jungle gyms and circle time, they have nature walks and adventure time.  It's pretty much the best preschool EVER.  And all for the bargain price of $98 a month!  It's easily the cheapest preschool in Naperville, where folks can pay close to $20,000 a year for the luxury preschools.  But it's the right one for Ben, because he's thriving there!  And I think so highly of it I recruited two of his friends for next year...can you say CARPOOL?  Yahoo!!

Oops, sorry...tangent.

Back to the magic...

You might wonder what Jack was doing all this time.   He was keeping busy...

Practicing his Jedi skills by cutting the grass with two light sabers.  Good on the right, evil on the left.  Duality.  Kinda appropriate for my sweet/angry boy.

As the last rays of the sun disappeared, we had to hustle home to welcome Nannie and Gray from the airport with Daddy.   But that didn't' stop them from one last adventure climbing up a tree.  Not sure if this type of communing with nature (tree hugging, literally) is park-approved activity, but it sure made for some happy kiddos!