A Piece of my Week Away

Once again my family has returned safely from their annual trip up to the Qualls' Nest. While I was gone, I visited old hide-aways, and built new secret places. The four of us older girls observed the tea party tradition, with a new twist, and as always, it was one of the nicest tea parties we've ever had.

The main focus for us girls was reading this year. We built ourselves a tidy nest tucked among the grass where we could hear the river running past our walls. There we sat for hours on end reading. We perused the pages of a well loved poetry book that four out of the five of us girls were familiar with already. We read "The Best Man" (a Grace Livingston Hill novel) to indulge our light and fluffy reading desires, though somehow fluffy books don't seem so fluffy when read aloud. Once we'd gotten our need for romance out of the way, we turned to "The Man Who Was Thrusday" by G. K. Chesterton to add a little bit of variety to our usual reading selection. When our readers' voices tired, or we had something that must be talked about, the book would be set aside and we'd chatter away, or simply lay on our backs looking up at the sky and each think our own thoughts, perhaps dozing off for a minute or two with the varied sounds of the river as our lullaby. Then we'd be back to our book, after all we had to have them finished by the end of the week.

During the times when us girls were not off reading in the woods, we were probably to be found at the swimming hole or up at the lodge talking with our very cool brothers. Or perhaps we were watching our beautiful little sisters dancing around the lawn chasing after butterflies.

It was a perfect week, lots of relaxing, with a good dose of activity interspersed at odd intervals. I was spending time with my favorite people, at one of my favoritest places to be, I couldn't possibly have asked for more.