Celebrating Love!

For the month of February the gaggle and I decided that we were going to focus on Love.  We talked about the importance of showing love to one another during our Family Home Evenings and sung songs like "Love One Another" and "Love at Home" but we also emphasized that it was important to recognize the things that we love about each other and recognize how others have shown love to us.  This lead us to teaching our girls the primary song "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" that talks all about appreciating all the blessings the Lord has given us and that he gave them to us as an expression of His love for us.  On the first of February we had our first lesson and decided we were going to make a heart wall (door) that showed what we loved about each other.

 Each night we would rotate and everyone would take turns saying what they loved about each other.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Recently during one of our Sacrament Meetings at Church a neighbor shared a poem that immediately had tears filling my eyes and me self consciously trying to wipe them away without people seeing the grown man crying in church over a poem (I should realize that people know that I'm not the manly man by now and just give up trying to pretend that I am even a little bit).  Here is the poem:

The Children's Hour

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight,

      When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations,

      That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

      The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

      And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

      Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

      And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

      Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

      To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

      A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

      They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

      O'er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

      They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

      Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

      In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

      Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old mustache as I am

      Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

      And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

      In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

      Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

      And moulder in dust away! 

The reason the poem struck me was that it expressed in words my life right now and just how I feel about my little gaggle.  I had the overwhelming feeling that too soon for me to stop it, my girls will be moving on.  New men will take my place at the center of their lives and I will be there looking on remembering the times that they plotted to tackle me as I walked into the room and wrestled with me their arms to wrapped around me showering me with kisses and giggles.