This moment: no picture, only words

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We had a moment, but it didn't make it onto the camera. So only words, no picture this week.

Clara, Alexandra and I were home together on Friday and our task for the day was to bake a dessert for our weekly dinner with friends that evening. As we talked about the ingredients we had that could possibly be turned into a dessert, we came up with carrot cake. After all, we have four rows of huge, beautiful, orange carrots in the garden. We found a recipe for a carrot spice cake, but it called for apple sauce, which we didn't have.

"But we can make applesauce," Clara said practically.

She was right. So we headed out to pick a basket of apples. We brought them in and cut them up. We cooked them down in a big pot with cinnamon. We took turns churning the mushy apples through the food mill, watching the bowl fill with pink sauce. We measured out a cup of applesauce and made our carrot spice cake.

While we were standing around the counter, taking turns with the food mill and singing our "taking turns song" (everyone gets a turn for one round of the song, then we switch), I realized it was one of those perfect moments: baking an apple spice cake on a chilly fall morning with carrots from our garden, apple sauce from our trees, and eggs from our chickens. We were all happy and content. 

Moments like this appear on blogs (including mine) all the time, but at least in my life, they are usually fleeting, lasting just long enough to grab the camera and take a picture. Then the scene changes, squabbles break out, something new takes over, and the moment is gone.

But this moment lasted. I would have loved to have captured it in a picture, and at one point, for about a second, I contemplated grabbing the camera. But I didn't, because this time I was in the moment.

Usually, I prefer to be on the periphery of my children's activity and play. This week, I enjoyed being in their moment, and I love that it lasted.