sheepskin.

This morning Emma was sitting on the couch in the living room with me, getting her hair done before school. She said the sheepskin 'doesn't smell good'. I pressed my face into it and inhaled deeply. It smells great! It smells a bit sheepy, which is perfect. It reminds me of our sheep when I was little, on the farm. My sisters and I each had one named after us, which I'm pretty sure didn't even begin to matter to the sheep themselves, but made us feel pretty good. My crafty Aunt Mona carded and spun the wool, and wove us scarves from our very own sheeps' wool. And there are few smells that please me better than the warm, dusty scent of a barn. It reminds me of hugging horses, and cuddling a baby goat... watching cows chew their food, and playing in the hay barn. Dad and Uncle Shawn tied a huge thick rope to the rafters, and we got to swing off the top of the calving shed in the barn, and land in the straw. We also had a fort up there, made of small square bales. We climbed the ladder on the side and peeked out the windows between the straw bale 'bricks', into the rest of the big barn. We even found a little door up in the wall that we crawled through and found one of the old red vinyl kitchen chairs from the farmhouse! And we also came across a barn cat's secret stash of kittens! We climbed out onto the roof, and decided not to slide off into the manure pile!
I think I could write a lot more precious childhood memories... but I'll save some for another day.
Happy Birthday Dad! You grew up there, too... Thanks for all the good times you gave us as children!