Three little Monkeys fall Through a Hole

 Once upon a time, there were three siblings and their names were Ben, Sarah, and Veronica. They loved each other dearly and to prove their love they bickered and whined and tattle told every chance they had.

Ben was sort of the leader of the pack, being 11 and being the only boy. He learned from an early age that he had to stay on top if he was going to survive two rambunctious little sisters. He lived for football and loved his tackle football team (even if they were losing miserably!)

Sarah was the drama queen; a fact that she was enormously proud of. At age 9 she was a fashion diva and her most treasured physical feature was her long brown hair. (Don’t forget the natural blonde highlights!)

Veronica was the superior monkey; always had been and always will be. She was a supreme mix of sweetness, mischief, confidence, and trouble. She reminded me of a pixy. She loved to make others happy. (Unless it interfered with her happiness – then you’d do well to get out of the way.)

Now that the introductions are over, I will dive right in to the grandest adventure the three (four if you count the dog – Milo) have ever had or will ever have again.

It all began on a warm summer day in Colorado. The three children were blessed with a big back yard and they employed it frequently. This day was particularly hot and caused them to take refuge beneath the yards largest tree. It was an evergreen and was perfect for hiding under, due to its low hanging branches and its spacious circumference. They had small chairs and a plastic side table set up and even with that there was ample room to move about and pretend a million different scenarios of capturing the enemy and being the enemy taken to be held and forced to give up top secret, well, secrets.

On this day, they were doing just that and giggling and yelling and getting mad and then happy again and in general being the happy, goofy, troublesome bunch that they were. It was all fun and games until……Ben noticed something quite odd by the base of the tree. It was a strange darkness that seemed to float an inch or two from the ground. It seemed like an optical illusion of sorts and to quell his curiosity he reached over to touch it. At first, he decided it was just a shadow or his eyes playing tricks on him because when he tried to grab it he felt nothing at all. But then, he realized that as his fingers went through the top of the darkness, he couldn’t feel them at all. Worse than that, the fingers did not appear on the bottom of the darkness as one would expect. This shocked him about five feet backwards and caused his sisters to stop their current argument and take notice.

“What?" they both asked in unison.  

"There's a weird hole or something; I'm going in to get mom."