Late afternoon. 

A golden autumn sun pours in to the living room in full, bright force as Gavin runs from the front door and sails through the air in his magnificent jump down the stairs to the family room.  He lands bent-knee in perfect Spiderman form, delighting his two sisters and his little cousin.  Sweet sugar and spice girls squeal and clap and shout their praises while they run in circles  throwing their heads back to laugh without reserve.

Guini is alternately power-serving her pink balloon like she is on the Olympic Volleyball team or kicking it down the imaginary kitchen floor soccer field.  Gemma’s teeth make small squeaky noises against her balloon as she tries to bite it while Gavin reports on his high scores at school today in between masterful leaps into the air. Sandy-the-Dog  is quite happy indeed to see the popcorn and M & Ms flying through the air as an unexpected afternoon snack. Full of sass and spunk and decked in a purple t-shirt and black gauchos, Averi saunters across the room with her hand on her hip, and up on her tippie-toes, just like I did at her age!

At exactly 3:52 pm

Out the window in the brightly-lit, sunny street we spy a pearly-white Nissan Maxima pulling in the driveway.  Rocky is here!  Rocky is here! even Averi cries out.  All 4 kids and the dog do the happy dance, as if Rocky were a super-hero or a beloved friend returning from a far away land.  He comes in the house to hugs and children jumping up and down and exclamations of love and we realize we are in the middle of a spontaneous party of delight.  You can practically see the confetti flying through the air.

These are the moments.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”