The things you don't take pictures of...

...are sometimes the things you miss the most.

Today before church, we drove to a park that we have often visited after church for a picnic, or with friends after Bible study. We suspected that the playground would be gone, burned from the recent fires. It was completely gone.

Before we drove there, we told Lukas that we suspected that the playground was burned, and did he still want to go see. He said he did, hoping it was still there. The playground was a one-of-a-kind thing...a huge fort made out of wood, with lots of places to hide, climb, chase friends, find lizards and snakes. I don't know who made it, but I think it was definitely hand made, not mass-produced.

And now as I look through almost five years of pictures of our kids, I can't find one picture of the playground to share. Here's a link to a picture someone else took.

Tonight at dinner, Lukas said he hoped the next playground they built wouldn't burn. "What doesn't burn, Mom?"

"Metal doesn't burn, but even if they had built it of metal, you wouldn't want to play on it, because the paint would have been burned off."

So we had a long discussion about what playgrounds could be made of, and still be playable after a fire went through.

A rock playground is the best one we came up with. If someone doesn't build one soon, Lukas will!