How many times can I say, "Magic?"

One of the things I love most about children is that they believe their world is magic. I'm not just talking Santa and Disney World, but the everyday magic that happens in the life of a child. As the years of our life add on, the number of magical moments seem to be subtracted off. As adults most things seem ordinary, this is why when we look back on our childhood and recall special memories that magical feeling rushes through us. I know, it sounds a little bit Care-Bear-hugs-and-giant-lollipops-ish, but how magnificent would it be bottle that feeling of waking up on Christmas morning at 6 years old?

I came close to one of these moments on Friday evening. I was driving to deliver a meal to a woman who has a new baby when I saw something that made me gasp. That inhale on my gasp could have gone on for days! Now before I saw this awe inspiring sight, I was looking at the mountains and thinking how pretty they look now that all the trees are green and full. Just as I was coming back to reality from my mountain-gazing (don't fret, I was at a stop light!) I saw a pack of 6 hot air balloons float across the sky. Insert giant gasp here. By the time I was able to pull over to take a picture they had slipped out of sight behind a mountain. But they would give me the opportunity on my way home to snap a quick photo with my phone just to allow me some street cred for this post.

Now I understand that there is a scientific explanation behind how and why a hot air balloon can fly, but as I watched one of those bad boys float effortlessly across a highway over all those cars and building and trees, it was like watching magic in action. That childlike essence of wonder passed through me and I decided that I was to come home and book a ride on a hot air balloon!

After seeing this sight on an ordinary Friday evening, I felt all weekend my senses were heightened to the little pockets of time in each day where we might find a handful of those special feelings.

Jeff and I took the boys to a train exhibit at Cheekwood, which is a gorgeous botanical garden and museum here in Nashville. Our boys were among the dozen going bonkers over the small village of trains buzzing around what seemed to be endless tracks. And I saw it. I saw it in the eyes of my children and the eyes of other people's children: magic. (Well, there was one approximately 12 year old girl who walked over to Parker and said, "You know that's not a real waterfall, right? I, like, saw a hose, like, back there. So it's like, fake." Yeah, she was not in such a magical mood. She can go listen to Justin Bieber in the corner.) The excitement these kids were emitting as they darted from one side of the exhibit to the next was tangible, there was something in the air, I tell ya.

As we walked through the gardens there were numerous children rolling down grassy hills and skipping stones in the pond and pretending they were in an enchanted forest. How freakin' awesome is rolling down a hill, by the way? Why do you not see adults rolling down hills? I was so tempted! BUT, I was wearing white pants that I really like...

Our weekend also included a trip to our neighborhood park. Each time we go there, the boys love to climb these rocks out in the field. To me, they are rocks. To my kids, they are "mountains." Here they sit on the mountain they have climbed, feeling big and tall and full of possibility. I want to view the world through their lenses. 

What seems small to us in immense to them. It is magic.