We miss you DaDa

Tom is gone to Omaha for the weekend, so this post is for him.

Yesterday after nap, it was storytime of coarse. Cadence gathered some of her students and I gathered a few more. She was having a blast "reading" to them and then searched through all of them to find the ones with musical buttons in their feet. She thinks all stuffed friends should have hidden musical buttons, but I tend to disagree, especially now that she can push the button herself.




Today, my parents neighborhood had their Halloween party. Cadence and I went and she loved playing with all the kids. Here we are on the swings as one of her "friends" took our picture. Check back on Halloween for the costume reveal.

NASCAR with Gramps

good seeing you last week Gramps! Here are some pictures for you.

"howl said the mother, we howl said the 9..."

Here is another one of Cadence's cute little sweet charming traits that make her such a joy to have as a daughter.

We got this book as a gift from our good friend Amy. She lives far away out in the desert of Arizona and thanks to her, Cadence knows what a Coyote, Road Runner, and a Gila Monster are! One day soon we hope to take her out to the desert for a field trip. "Hoooowwwwwwwwlllll" to all our friends, big and little, in the desert.

We went on down to Shelby, again

My Dad flew in from AZ for a long weekend with the family. As usual, it was a pain getting to and leaving the Charlotte area, but we had a great time while we were there. On Saturday morning we met up with Cadence's cousins at Freedom Park. Fun with Emerson:

After that, we headed to Shelby, and ended up going to their downtown (if you can call it that!) music festival.
Hay there!

A good one with Grampa Norm


On Sunday, I decided to load up some of my childhood relics that my mom had been storing in the attic. On this blog, we've probably established that Cadence loves vehicles. Well, I pulled-out a Rubbermaid container full of my old Matchbox cars, and she actually let out a little gasp of delight!

Fun for all ages!

She'll share.


I was a fan of LandCruisers as a child. Still am.

These will date me I suppose. We've got two A-Team vans, Snoopy and Woodstock, a Decepticon, Airwolf, ZZ Top's ride, and some Duke's of Hazzard rides (I came across Daisy Duke's Jeep and Boss Hogg's Caddy after I took the pic).

Coco makes me laugh

Corrina, Cadence and I were out running after-work errands this afternoon. Corrina was driving defensively; as we were dealing with several unskilled NC motorists. At one point we had a lady who was unable to pull-off a U-turn in a very busy intersection. It would be clear to most anyone that unless you're driving a golf cart or a smart car (same thing) you wouldn't be able to pull a U-ee in this particular location. As anyone who knows her would expect, Coco commented, but remained cool. Seconds later, in this same intersection, a Jeep full of college kids pulled-out in front of us, cutting us off (T-bone style). That's when Corrina dropped this clean, quotable gem: "There's a whole lot of tools in the shed today." Awesome.

Have you smiled today?

We went on down to Shelby

Corrina, Cadence, Jake and I went to visit my family this weekend. On Saturday, Mike had a soccer game. I think the final score was 5-0. The good guys won. Mike scored the first goal of the game, and played goalie (#7) for the second half. As usual, Aunt Tia was great at keeping Cadence happy and off the field. I think Grandma liked showing her off.



On Sunday, we spent some time with Shelby's finest at the Cleveland County Fair. Cadence had a great time. The first thing she got to see was the Farm Equipment aka "Ta-tuh" (tractor). FYI, her favorite toy has remained a Catapillar Backhoe Loader Corrina picked it for her up months ago. Honestly, she's quite fascinated with heavy machinery in general. Paw Paw kids that she'll be a truck driver. I think when she grows up she'll be building and grooming jumps for Ryder.



Cool pic by Coco (above). We saw enough livestock for me, but then again, no livestock is enough for me. I guess this is something that would go under, "things you do for your kids." The kid did love it. She squeezed a chick just a bit too much, and fortunately, she relinquished it. She was amazed that cows really do "moo" in real life. Full-size horses seemed alright. She had more fun barking at the miniature ones.