There must be a sin in there somewhere...

The close of a good day. I spent the last couple of hours sitting on the porch with my wife drinking coffee, next to a grill loaded down with hamburgers. Kicked back with our feet propped up we watched as the whitest clouds I've ever seen slowly passed overhead against a pure blue sky....

The grass was cut, lightning bugs were swimming around in the humid air, James was desperately trying to figure out how to launch a ball from a contraption he made to "reach geocentric orbit" (his own words), Patrick was inside doing psychology homework, the only sound we could hear was the wind in the trees and the slow sizzle of the hamburgers on the grill... Occasionally we would peer over the porch rail to locate James as he was at the front edge of the yard and out of earshot.

I spent the day riding on the kawasaki mule, shooting guns with my nephews, playing with kids, and walking with my mother. To see the excited look in the eyes of kids at play and to hear the wisdom in my mothers words seemed to be fitting somehow, from the oldest generation to the newest. Of course it made me think of my father and what he would've been into today. If he had been my age he would've waited until we were all done shooting and bragging, then step up and rip the dead center of the targets out in rapid fire and smile smugly as he walked away without a word. Later in life he would've driven out there on the kawsaki mule and sat by watching as we shot, telling us what we were doing wrong then praising us when we did it correctly... and dammit, he was always right. During the last part of his life he would've sat on the patio saying to us, "Now ya'll don't shoot the chillun, keep an eye on them out there.." as we would come inside to get a drink. Lord I do miss him on days like this. With all the kids around and a continual filing in and out of family he would've been in his element.

From our place you can't see the road, its about seven hundred feet up the driveway. When darkness began to take over we called James in to eat burgers. I reached over, picked up the camera and took the shot above. That's our view of the road from our porch at dusk. This kind of evening is exactly what life is about...