Trees, an “L” and memories…

The first 4 pics are from the first big branch that fell. The last one is a new, bigger branch.

I’ve written about trees before. Strange tree growth, Letters, trees and answered prayer...

I have a dead tree in my backyard, that keeps falling apart, per the pictures.

I have to clean up branches every time it sheds those branches.

I usually enlist my children to help - that’s why God gave them to me - to help me clean up the yard. 

It took a lot of years to figure that out, but now that I know the purpose of my children, my yard-work is much more effective, and my yard looks great!

So, look at this short, but very cool video…

My wife told me that she heard some large wood cracking noises, while sitting on our deck. She thought it might be the dead tree, and was concerned that it may hit our house, or our neighbors fence (I’ve been concerned about that too - look at the pic from the previous 40 foot branch that fell).  

We stood on the deck for a few minutes and heard a couple more cracks, then some louder cracks. I grabbed my phone and hit the video, and just as I did, the branch started to go - it was 50 feet in length and missed our house, our neighbors fence and didn’t really cause any damage, other than sticks. Glad my wife called me up to see and hear the cracking or I wouldn't have been able to get this cool video. She gets the credit of this post.

So, I now had some work cut out for me - and my worker children!

When I started the clean up, only my youngest son could help me - he’s 9 and he enjoys working, so I’m grateful that he was there to help. It was almost 100 degrees when we were out there working. We got the small branches and put them on a tarp. We dragged the larger branches down the hill to the curb. We also took lots of Gatorade and water breaks. 

We worked on this for a couple of hours. I had to get a chain saw to finish the work another day. He was a huge help and we built some memories as we cleaned up the mess. 

One of the memories was a stick - look at this pic of the stick - love to rhyme...that never gets old.

His first name begins with an “L” so he thought it was awesome that he found a stick that was perfectly shaped like his initial. We stripped some bark off of it and he has it as a souvenir of our work.

It reminded me of some simple principles…

Work hard - it feels great to complete a task.

Work together - especially with family - it builds memories.

Include your children - not just in the fun and games, of life, but the work too.

Build memories - even the little things create cool memories.

Your memories are special to you - the “L” stick doesn’t mean much to you, but it does to my son and me.

Lessons Learned: All those things above. God gives us relationships - don’t go it alone. BTW - I don’t enslave my children in the yard all the time, just for 20-25 hours per week - kidding.

Thoughts: What simple cool memories do you have?

#failalot

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