Joy Is Just A Patio Away

I have the greatest family in the world. Yeah, yeah, I know, you have the greatest family in the world. But really, I love my family with all my heart, and I couldn't ask for a better one. I always relish the time that I get to spend with them, even when we are taking on a monumental project.

So monumental might be too dramatic of a word to use here.

This past weekend, my family and I built a patio for my Mom's 50th birthday. A patio, NOT a deck. You may ask what the difference between the two is. Honestly, I do not know. I just keep telling people that one has bricks and the other has wood. We assembled the brick one. And by we, I mean my Uncle assembled it. The rest of us just sort of stood around watching him, wondering if there was anything we could do. I mean, we helped. Everyone needs moral support, right?

At one point, my mother brings out a box and says, "We have a slip-n-slide if you want to get it out!" Now, what you have to understand is that my mom is the kind of person that has some of the most random things in her house that you don't think you would ever use, but one day, you may just have a need for it. Ergo, the slip-n-slide. Naturally, we bust this thing out and I decide to go first. As a child, I had a traumatic incident with a slip-n-slide that involved a combination of too little water on the slide and my cheetah-like speed not mixing well.... But, thankfully, I slid gracefully through the water, followed closely by my other cousins having a go.

Eventually, we made it back to the patio. The thing about my family is that while we definitely know how to have a good time, we also know how to buckle down and get the job done. In under 12 hours, we had built a substantial patio in the backyard. If we hadn't of ran out of bricks, who knows what could've happened. As we stood on our work, covered in dirt from head to tow, bodies aching from the long day of work (I think mine was because of the slip-n-slide go...), I couldn't help but love those people just a little more. My family may be completely nuts at times, but that doesn't change the fact that they are my family.

I think what I am trying to say here isn't just a message about family. I think that ultimately, I learned that with life, you have to find joy in the smallest of things. We spend so much of our time working, and we don't take the time to have fun every once in a while. We only have one life to live, so we might as well live it up.

So go find your slip-n-slide.