My mother-in-law, Jackie, has been here visiting for a few days.  She had a chance to zip away from Eastern Idaho for a long weekend, so she came to see us.

She’s crazy about her grandaughters… and we’re all crazy about her.

On Saturday afternoon Jackie, the girls, and I, went out to visit Buck, who was working on building a new bridge across Prairie Creek. 

Here he is measuring… which I completely trust him to do… (not that my opinion would alter any of the bridge building process).

Here he is chain sawing… which I also trust him to do (again my opinion is pretty much void in the whole thing).
 

Here he is holding my our baby.  Not shocking to you, I also trust him to do this. 

What I didn’t realize was that my trust would be tested when we went out to the bridge on Saturday.  I didn’t know ahead of time that we were going to have to get to the other side of the unfinished piece of work.  

First, Buck carried Lucy across, with the waters of Prairie Creek “raging” below…

Wild man that he is, he wasn’t worried in the least.  I kissed Lucy goodbye and asked all sorts of questions about the safety of this endeavor.  Buck, calm, and with assurance, took her from me and said he’d be right back for Katelyn.  Lucy, my little worrier, wasn’t worried in the least.  She trusts her daddy.  I kind of do, too… with measuring and chainsaws…

I decided I better walk across to be with Lucy while Buck got Katelyn.  I handed Kate to Grandma Jackie, kissing my baby goodbye.  Then I had to walk the plank.  It was really scary,  and that’s putting it mildly.  The water is probably 15 feet below the 4″ wide steel planks and the water isn’t exactly enticing.  My legs shook and Buck had to coach me with nearly every step.  Being the independent gal that I am (or thought I was!), it was really pretty embarrassing. 

After Buck carried Kate to safety (me!), Jackie had to cross.  I had all kinds of visions of my mother-in-law falling into the water below, but with only the slightest bit of hesitation…

across she came with the utmost confidence and determination.

After safely getting the crew to the other side of the bridge, I started to drive away in my mini-van and then managed to get it high centered on a rock.  I wanted to take pictures of the event so I could share them with you, but as my beloved husband was jacking the car up off the rock, he said things (with calm clarity) to me like, “you probably shouldn’t be hot-rodding around in this thing” and “umm… yeah, you say you weren’t reckless, but the rock that could’ve ripped out your oil pan (??) makes me think you were being reckless…”

When Buck makes comments like that and is helping me out of a mess I’ve made, I choose to leave the camera in the car.  It’s better for our marriage.  I will admit that I did well up with a little bit of youthful pride knowing that, while my husband completely trusts me to drive tractors and pick-ups with horsetrailers, he might even consider me a reckless mini-van driver ;-)