The musings, humor, fairytales, love letters and poetry of a GenX Momma brain.
I've been encouraged through other Wattpad authors to continue writing, so this is the start of that request. Evidently I have quite a few stories to tell
I hope you enjo...
In fact, he'll tell anyone within one hundred square yards that his favorite things in the whole wide world are dinosaurs and Hot Wheels junk yards. My basement is a testament to his devotion to both of those pursuits.
It's also not a secret that most parents try to indulge their kids with the things they love. Hence, he has a shelf down there that looks like this.
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What is kind of a secret, is the fact we can't afford to do much more than that.
My husband and I both work, and we struggle to offset the cost of living while encouraging his creativity and offering healthy memory building activities as a family.
We're both old enough to understand that making those memories is much more important than accumulating the trappings of "success."
To accomplish this at the beginning of 2023, we sat down at the dinner table as a family and made a list on a post-it note of all the experiences we wanted to make happen this year.
Some were fairly easily accomplished, like going out for Mexican food at a fun restaurant and visiting his great Uncle Bill.
While others would require planning and budgeting, such as going to the county fair, attending a minor league baseball game, family camping weekends, a day trip to a fossil dig park. But the culmination of all of it was a road trip across the country to attend a church family retreat and see the dinosaurs.
We didn't get everything on the list accomplished this year, but we did over half of it. And this trip truly made an impression on all of us. Five hotels, two weeks and a total of six days in the car traveling together. Any one of those things could either make or break a family unit, but this trip was totally worth all of the crumbs in the car.
Except for the sleeping in the same bed as your child in a two-star hotel, part. My Yelp review for that is 0/10 stars. Do not recommend.
We skimmed a dipper off the top of our life's bucket list, and as we come close to this year's season of gratitude, I can't even explain how thankful I feel that we made it happen.
Two hours northwest of Grand Junction, Colorado is a little town in the middle of nowhere called, Dinosaur. Really, there is. Keep going through it and another half hour down the road you'll take a right onto a narrow-paved road that enters you into the land of earth's geologic history.
For twenty-five dollars per car, you can enjoy an entire day at the Fossil Quarry exhibit, hike all the trails that fork off the main road, shop for goodies at the visitor's center and drive through the most majestic desert mountains I've ever seen.
The quarry exhibit is the excavated side of a mountain that is still somewhat of an active dig site. where you can learn more.
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Housed in a newer building this deposit of terrible lizards was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century and provided several full dinosaur skeletons for various museums around the world.
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The dinosaurs will fade away, when his brain is filled with hormones, sex and other questionable material, like politics, world affairs and SAT's.
He won't remember the Camarasaurus, the Allosaurus, or Stegosaurus, or any of the other dinosaurs that were buried in the wall of bones. He'll barely remember his favorite Jurassic genetic mash-up, Indominus Rex. Or his first love Tyrannosaurus Rex.
His affections won't lie with vast numbers of huge bones, telling the earth's time like a ticking clock.
He won't remember his joy and seriousness as he took the oath from the park Ranger to qualify to be a Junior Ranger. He'll forget how proud he was to wear the badge.
He'll barely remember us, as we watch him sprout puberty riddled wings and try to fly away.
But I hope that sometimes, maybe once in a while, I can mention this moment, show him a picture, and sit with him at whatever screen he prefers.
Perhaps we can both look at the dinosaurs together. Maybe he'll smile and maybe he'll let his mother hug him.
And maybe, just maybe he'll remember how much he loved those dinosaurs when he was young, and that we will love him long after our fossilized hearts have ceased to beat.
