Just Call Us Framily

The new year started for us with a weekend of beautiful moments.  We piled in the car on New Years Day and headed to the gorgeous mountains of Arizona where the Birdnos live. Our anticipation of seeing their familiar, happy smiles had grown exponentially for the 21 hours before our departure because the first hour in that set of 21 marked the very hour we were planning to leave.  But a heavy snowstorm had swooped in and the highway to their home had been closed, leaving us packed and ready with nowhere to go.    

So you can imagine our excitement 21 hours later when the road closure lifted, and you can imagine our greater excitement 25 hours later when we pulled up to their snowy house and were swept up in their hugs.  

The Birdnos moved to North Carolina the exact same week that we did, and we became instant friends. We helped each other through pregnancies and through losses, through a triathlon and through a scary hospital emergency, through so many happy times and, simply put, through the thickness of those tender years when we were just learning how to be adults and parents.  Cami is one of The Incredible people in my life, and I feel I owe most of my own patience to her example.  

It's been over a decade since that first hello. We've added 8 more children to the mix, and several wrinkles and grey hairs--- and I feel lucky, because I can see the friendships thriving among our growing children, and I know that there are hundreds of wrinkles and grey hairs waiting to paint the decades of our future. 

I love the Birdnos - and spending a weekend with them filled the whole first days of January with countless beautiful moments. 

Most of those moments happened in the new fallen snow.  Sledding, hiking, trail blazing, snowball fighting, snow angels... it was refreshing to spend so many hours outside and it filled me right up.

This guy wasn't so sure at first about the whole idea of careening down a mountain on a tube.  But after he tried it once, he was sure:

Not. Fun.

His tears were soothed and we didn't make him try again.  But after a couple of hours watching everyone else, he grabbed the string of one of the sleds and toddled through the snow (in the most adorable way because, clunky winter boots) to put it in my hand.  He then made his way back to the sled and, looking like a giant, awkward, mixture of blueberry and marshmallow, plopped down and motioned for me to 'pull'.  I pulled him all over on the top of that hill, slowly at first, and eventually running as fast as I could manage--- his squeals of laughter propelling my energy. Before long, I was sitting on the sled behind him, nose pointed down the hill, listening to his laughter as we flew to towards the bottom.
"Gehn! gehn! gehn!" he said once we stopped.
"Yes, we can go again," I replied.
Being a Daddy's Boy, he was interested in going down with "Da-Dee" and Daddy was more than happy to do so.  But after a couple of runs together, he reached to me from Brian's arms and, in a moment of heart-stopping sweetness said, "Ma-mee. Go."  He rarely chooses me when Daddy is an option, and I made sure to take note of that incredibly beautiful moment and to tuck it into the small category of 'See... He does Love You, Too'.

Before we pushed off from the top, he arched his neck around to say, "Koh. Koh. Koh. Koh."
"It is cold, isn't it?" I replied.  He smiled, reached his mittened hands up and pulled the brim of his red hat down over his pink face in preparation.  Ready to go.  I smiled at his problem solving skills, and we flew down the mountain together.

The other kids didn't seem to have a learning curve.  They were at it from the very beginning.

That night, we left the kids to their own devices (um... kids who are old enough to babysit?  Life Changing) so that we four adults could take our own hike through the beautiful mountains and have some uninterrupted conversations.  But we must have missed the childlike energy because we wasted no time assuming the roles ourselves. We did a few donuts in the truck, climbed to an impressively tiny cave, slid down giant rocks, got the seats of our snowpants dirty from sliding down the mountain, and spent some time trying to push over the Lightning Tree (which did not budge).

The next day, we took the kids on the same hike and watched them trail blaze their way up the sides of the mountains--- feeling like they were going where no kid had gone before as they stepped fresh footprints in the untouched snow.  They created their own sledding trails and climbed up their own pathways and encouraged each other whenever one found something 'really awesome'.

I love the Birdnos --- or, Birdnoses, as Miles calls them.

This next collage smells sweetly of friendship to me.  My kids aren't going to be lucky enough to have cousins around through their little-kid years, and for a long time that saddened me.  But one day, years ago, I looked around at the children who are in my kids' lives and I realized that my kids haven't missed out one bit.

Driving with a mixture of Birdno and Alder kids in the back of the van, I heard sweet six-year-old Lynneah say to Miles, "Are you my family?"
"Ummm..." came Miles's reply, "I don't think so."
"But," retorted Lynneah, "I think that maybe we are."
"But...no...? But family is like brothers, and like sisters, and like cousins... so I don't think we are."

I smiled at the sweetness and turned around in my seat to help them in their conversation, "I can tell you what you are... You guys are framily.  Friends that love each other so much that you're just. like. family... framily."

This sparked a spirited conversation in which the phrases "Fruncle Brian" and "Frant Lindsay" were thrown out, and 10-year-old Josh turned to Carson and said, "Hey, wait!  That makes you... my frousin!  Hi frousin!"
A chorus of 'hi frousin!'s echoed through the car and left me choking back the lump in my throat.

Everyone needs a frousin.

After all, who else would sit quietly through church to teach Miles how to write the word 'butt' in cursive?