A Snowy Evening Update

Mitch arrived home safe and sound after a weekend at the farm (one of his last as his mother recently sold it). He came home with a lot of stuff, some sentimental and some that went immediately into the trash (he knew it even before he brought it home). We had a lot of fun going through the stuff. Some of the treasures we kept: 5 Mason jars that have taglines, all featuring the name Mason; Mitch's wrestling pins; his yearbooks (with love notes from lots of girls- more on that later); Mitch's tractor/truck set (the boys went wild). We also sat down this evening to look at the pictures his sister-in-law took this weekend, all of the farm- outside and in. Even though I didn't grow up there, I still feel a sense of loss. All of the picture remind me of Mitch's father and my thirteen years as a part of the family have imprinted the farm on my heart and in my mind. We intend to make one more trip to the farm in the next few weeks so we can take a farm picture of Mason and Clare (the two youngest grandchildren in the family). All of the grandchildren have a farm picture, so we need to make sure to include the last two little ones in the mix. Missi, Mitch's oldest sister, has an idea to have Mason and Clare dragging the "For Sale" sign behind them. I think it's a cute idea.

So these girls.... hmmm. It was fun to read the notes former girlfriends and potential girlfriends wrote in Mitch's yearbook. So idealistic in tone. So carefree (but so much drama along with that). I was able to determine a number of threads that held all the notes together. These girls all liked having long talks with my husband; they all had crushes on him; they all wanted to "party with him some time"; they all told him to "never change." Oh, and so many of them had mentioned memories the girls predicted he and they would never forget. Funny thing is, we do forget those high school moments we claim we will never forget. I've noticed that in some of my high school memorabilia. I can no longer recall a lot of what was so incredibly important to me between the ages of sixteen and eighteen.

Mitch and I have been together since 1997. I told him that he and I should write letters to each other. What I would write now, I have no idea, but it's really pretty fun to think about what I could write and then save to read years from now....