Whirlwind Tour, Part II: Weekend at the Farm

While P was being punished with a work-related conference at a hotel where they had TVs in the bathroom mirrors (IN the bathroom MIRRORS) and live ducks swimming in the lobby's fountains, the kids and I hit the road as well and enjoyed a few days in East Texas at my parents' house, a place we lovingly - but not truthfully - refer to as "the Farm." This has been very confusing of late to a certain three-year-old who has the crazy notion that a "farm" is supposed to have "animals." But he will adjust to the inconsistencies of life soon enough.

For much of our visit, the kids played out on the back porch with Mom's ridiculously large collection of vintage Fisher Price Little People playsets and other remnants of my siblings' and my childhood while I relaxed in a porch swing nearby. I couldn't resist imagining how nice it would be to take that porch home with me... Just in case you haven't seen it, Dad says that the square footage of their almost-wraparound porch is nearly the same as that of their first floor: it's huge - and it's crowded with rockers and swings and sometimes with Fisher Price toys.

Years before they built their two-story, four-bedroom log "cabin," my dad wrote a song about it. Which is not as weird as it may sound - he writes a lot of songs. Well, actually, it is as weird as it may sound - but only because he writes songs like "Sailcat" (which describes what happens when a cat is smooshed by a truck on a highway and then hurled like a frisbee) or "Bread Pudding" (in which he claims the dessert is made with Lunch Lady spittle). "Home in the Country" is rather an oddball of his repetoire because it's so sweet and normal. It tells of his desire to have a "home in the country where the sky is blue" and "the cows all say moo!" Swinging on his porch, I wholeheartedly concurred that "city life is fine, but it somehow don't compare / with that warm country sunshine and that cool mountain air..."

Maybe someday P and I will enjoy our own home in the country; until then, we are blessed to share in the sweetness of the country homes that our parents have built - and to dream of having our own half-acre back porch someday...

My two little Batmans.

Paps always welcomes a good helper.

This wagon got a lot of mileage that weekend -
and provided Gram and myself with ample resistance training for a month, I think.

Porch playtime,
aka Vintage Toys 'R' Us.