Something sweet for my little boy

I’m always talking about making a home as meaningful as possible, and I wanted to show you one little thing we did in our mudroom to make it special for our son.

Last summer my second born started digging a massive hole in the backyard. There was already a bit of a hole where some massive tree roots were exposed, and I guess he thought that hole needed to be bigger. His work paid off when he found what he thought was a treasure: a pile of old red bricks.

After unearthing about 20 bricks, he had quite a stack in the backyard, and it didn’t take an Einstein to figure out they were the same bricks as those at the top of our chimney (see below). These ones must have been leftovers and got tossed out back, where they were eventually buried.

So when it came time to plan our mudroom, I started leaning toward a brick floor and thought of his bricks. I asked our tile guy if he could somehow incorporate them into the floor, so he cut down a few and used them to create the threshold by our Dutch door.

Our son is so proud that those are his bricks.

Nobody would know about the significance of that threshold unless I told them, but it will bring a smile to my face every day. More importantly, though, it will conjure up sweet childhood memories for my little boy who is just growing bigger and bigger each day. Boy, do I love him, and I hope this little part of our mudroom helps him know how much I really do. •