Please slow down time.  I’m loving this life right now.

One of the coolest things about having three kids, is that as I watch the oldest move through his high school years, the youngest one reminds me that the oldest was once his age and I can see time passing. It makes me be more mindful of the moments.

Tonight we stopped at the park between appointments because we had 30 minutes to spare.  We went to Las Palmas park, which was closed for remodeling for sometime.  When Juliana and Christian were little, I used to spend almost every week there watching them play with their friends and spending time with other mamas.

Coming back tonight, I admired the young mamas with their babies and reflected on that stage being over for me. I’m ok with that and happy to be where I am now, but every so often I remember what used to be as I look back with fond memories.

But tonight I was there to make new memories with Charlie. I LOVED watching him run around and exploring the new digs. He climbed to the top of the climbing wall, over and back, over and back, three times, without touching the ground, making sure I was watching. He climbed to the top of the highest slide and ran all around figuring out the new environment.

And I sat and watched him and loved him and got up to tease him and tickle him and was so very happy that we thought to spontaneously stop at the park to play.

This moment made my day. And tonight during prayers, he said, “I love you mama” and pulled his arms from under the covers to wrap around my neck to give me a good, tight hug. And then he said, “Let’s do roses and thorns” and he let me go first.

I told him my rose of the day was playing with him at the park and luckily I didn’t have any thorns today.

He said his rose was playing at the park with me too and that his thorn was missing out on serving at lunch duty today because he thought he had a newspaper meeting when he actually didn’t. He wished he could have worked with his friend Mark, and instead said he’ll have to wait to serve until Friday. We have to remember to do this every night and day.

These are the days.  

Go outside and PLAY and plant some roses, BeLoveRs. xo

Namaste.