The Simple Things

On Saturday Colt woke up not feeling well at all. It appears that he has a stomach bug! Poor little man. He was quite unhappy. Chris was gone most of day at a scout function and without the tag-team efforts we often employ, I was left to my own devices to cheer up Colt and to save our sanity.

By late morning, he was feeling a little bit better so I suggested we all go for a short walk into the desert. Carena, Colt, Jonathan and I put on our shoes and headed out. There is a nice path behind our community that we like to traverse. It ends at a small mesa that we "hike" up and then we can look over our community and have a great view of a small mountain to ther north. But, more than half way through our walk, Colt started complaining that he was too tired to walk and that he just wanted to go home. I was about to turn us around when something in the bushes on the other side of the mesa caught my eye. It was green. It was floating. It was a balloon! I told Colt that there would be a surprise once we got to the other side and so he trudged on.

And it wasn't any balloon - it was a big fancy FROG balloon! I untangled it from the bushes and clipped it onto Colt's pants. He smiled.

What a difference a simple balloon made! What a sweet treasure to find in the desert for a sick little boy. He held on to that balloon the rest of the day. When he fell asleep on the couch, it was right by his side. As soon as Chris got home, Colt pointed to his new balloon with a proud smile on his face.

Simple small things make a difference. They don't have to be fancy or expensive. Just getting a little something unexpected in a day makes it special. I remember, as a little girl, coming home from time to time to find a little picture that my mother had drawn during the day, sitting on my bed with a small caption such as, "I love you!" on it. It made my day, just like this balloon made Colt's day when he needed it the most.