Family Bonding

Today I realized that our family isn't like other families. Yes I've realized this before, this is not a new idea for me, but today maybe more than any other it was very apparent.

I was excited today because my little brother was coming over to 'visit' ie: we needed him to help mix cement for Mom's radio tower. We spent the entire afternoon together (the two least experienced cement mixers doing the mixture) shoveling, clanking shovels, poking, prying, dumping, wheelbarrowing and dumping.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, we cut down a tree that was close to the house because it will interfere with the radio antenna. So back to that 'safety first' thing... this time we had my little brother spotting, I was driving the truck with a cable attached through a block and back to the tree that was being cut down, and Dad was operating the chainsaw.

Despite some trouble with the chainsaw... again, and it being the longest amount of time its ever taken to cut a tree down in the entire history of tree cutting. Everything went as planned. Even if someone almost set the clutch on fire... it was definitely stinky and smoking. In my defense I was supposed to keep tension on the wire and then drive when it fell, but honestly it took for.ev.ar.

Sorry about your clutch Dad, I guess you can blame part of this one on me too.

Now you can't leave a perfectly good tree on the ground! So we began the well rehearsed process of turning said tree into firewood. Everything just clicked, we've done this so many times before, and at one point when I was throwing firewood at my little brother, we had to stop and laugh. This is our family bonding at its finest.

Some of the best times we've shared together have involved being wet, dirty, sweaty, sticky with pitch, tired, full of slivers, sore and in fear of incurring an injury.

It was the best 'Welcome Home' I could have imagined, I forgot how much I like the smell of chainsaw.