Tonight I heard crying upstairs, so I made my way upstairs to investigate. I found Briggs sobbing in his room – not crying, sobbing. Bennett and Cannon were also in his room, looking a little guilty. I try to get Briggs to talk to me but I can’t understand him through his tears. I look at Bennett and Cannon for a little help and Bennett just puts his hands in the air, says he didn’t do anything and then turns his head and fights back the giggles. I look at Cannon – he gives me no indication as to what caused the sobbing.

I ask if he’s hurt. No.

Then what happened?!

He spews words from his mouth and I only catch the words “road trip”.

I’m still clueless but he’s starting to calm down a little and in his jumbled voice I hear something along the lines of, “I just really want to go on our road trip with everyone, especially Hallie. I don’t want to miss it. I just love our road trip.”

Now, I’m more confused, but I call Hallie upstairs to share a little tender moment with him while I continue to get to the bottom of this.

I pull Bennett aside to get more details.

They were having an easter egg hunt in Briggs’ room. They hid one in his old backpack. When Briggs was searching he opened the backpack and found all his coloring books from last year’s summer road trip. He pulls them out of the bag and proceeds to open them and look through the pages. As he thumbs through, he starts to cry and at that point I came into the room.

After hearing Bennett’s story, I returned to Briggs to talk with him and sure enough, he just wanted to talk about how much he loves our summer road trip. I don’t know if he thought we weren’t going this year, but I assured him we would go. Maybe he thought Hallie wasn’t going to join us this year, I assured him she would be with us. He showed me the pretty pictures they colored together last year and I assured him they could color more this year. Then he was at ease. Just a little emotional blip – not sure where it came from but he was so tender and adamant that Hallie come with us, she has to be there. I agree buddy, I agree!