Evening again... You know sometimes I look around this place of ours and I am just amazed! That sounds like bragging, but it isn't. I can remember when I was 16 years old, and Cale and I were sitting at my house talking about building a log house. We looked at books and called companies for prices, and planned and dreamed about it all of the time. He had such determination, and I was so much in love, I would have walked through fire for him!! Still would, so that says something for us I guess.

That spring, I was then 17, I remember the first time we went to the woods and started cutting trees. We left my house at day-break. It was a beautiful day, cool but the sun was warm. We had an old chain saw, that barely ran, but we did manage to cut a few trees! Maybe 4 or 5. Every tree was caught by the others, in the thick grove we were cutting in. Then we would have to come-a-long them down.

By the next weekend, we skipped the chainsaw and started cutting them with a big hand-saw. It was actually faster!!! We have it hanging in the cathederal ceiling of our dining room. I look at it and think, Wow! We went into the woods and cut the trees down with our own hands, and really, really built a house! It is the greatest achievement you can imagine.

We were young, so we had a lot of fun too! It is kind of a romantic atmosphere, in a pine woods with that wonderful fragrant smell. We would take walks and have a picnic lunch. We didn't have any property yet, so we would dream a little about what the future would hold... We had so much determination. Logic would have told us we didn't stand a chance, but we had a dream to build a home, and the dream won out over logic.

"It is OK to build castles in the air, just put foundations under them!"

I am still a little amazed, and more in love now, than I was that first day in the pines, standing with my future husband, looking up at that first tree that would begin our home together.

-- Melissa in SE Ohio (me@home.net), February 19, 2002

Answers

Melissa, how sweet. You two are so lucky to have each other. Your family sounds great.

-- george nh (rcoopwalpole@aol.com), February 19, 2002.

Isn't it wonderful to still be in love with the man you have spent over half your life with, and nearly half married to?

One thing I will never forget about Lance's maternal Grandma; right after we were married, two of his uncles owned a steakhouse in Broken Arrow, OK which had a pool table and small dance floor, and also a stage where a third uncle led a band on weekend nights. We went up to visit one day, and stayed for the evening. Granddad was dancing on the floor with one of his daughter-in-laws, and Grannie was standing off to the side with us. She turned around and looked at me and said "After all these years, that old man still makes my heart skip a beat when I look at him". They had been married 42 years at that point, had six kids, and fifteen grandkids.

Ain't love grand?

-- Christine in OK (cljford@mmcable.com), February 19, 2002.

Melissa--I just want to say that I always tell our kids that they shouldn't even consider committment until they find someone they feel so strongly about that they ache. And they should look, above all, for someone who shows committment in all they do--because they will weather the storms that are likely to come to all of us.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), February 20, 2002.