I find it kind of funny the memories that music evokes. Be it a personal experience that you tie to a song or some other media like TV or movies. 

Six years ago, Katie’s family treated us all to a Father’s Day morning at the track. Arlington Race Track, more specifically. It was my first and only time ever at the track as I do not like gambling and only deal with horses via the Kentucky Derby on TV. 

I totally forgot to post pictures from Nathan’s last day as a second grader. Yeah, can you believe he’s going to be starting third grade in the fall? I sure can’t. 

There was a time when we could get dozens of photos of Nathan in a single session. Then he started moving and didn’t stop. Or, if he does stop, he doesn’t give us a photo friendly face.

I was scrolling through my Photos app and found this little gem of Nathan on one of my last days at work with the City of Naperville in 2017. 

Nathan left just a few minutes ago to spend the night at my parents’ house with his two cousins. My mom came to pick him up before she picks up the two girls and heads home. 

Man, this kid was stylin’ back in the day. It’s all the hat and the ‘tude.

By the time I turned three, I was pretty fully immersed in all things Star Wars. It was my life. 

Nathan and two of his cousins spent the night last night at my parents’ house. As part of the sleepover fun, this morning, my mom took them to see a movie. 

Got an email from Nathan's school district the other day. It read, in part...

Seeing that it hit the mid-50s today, we decided to bring down the bicycles for the first day this season and go for a quick ride. We knew it was coming but there was no longer any question, seeing Nathan on his bike, that he was way too big for it and it was time for a new one. 

As I mentioned last week, Nathan has developed an appreciation for The Scorpions. Yes, it has moved beyond just “Rock You Like a Hurricane” into other tracks.

As I’ve stated before, it’s both a blessing and a curse when modern kids movies revisit old music to add to their soundtracks.

Nathan really digs on popular music. He discovers it mostly from movie soundtracks and YouTube videos and has us add tracks randomly to a playlist we created for him in Spotify. 

Think someone’s excited for tomorrow?

As we can’t do what has become our annual holiday tradition and go on a Park District-sponsored trip on the “Polar Express,” we took part in a new event. 

Katie said something to me today that caught me way off guard. 

I happened my way down a Wikipedia rabbit hole today and he saw a picture of Sid Vicious. He asked about him and I told Nathan, "That's you!" He looked at me sideways and that's when I showed him this old picture of Nathan wearing his Halloween wig in advance of trick or treating back in 2016.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here before or not, but Nathan loves music. Not just listening to music, he loves singing and he’s got a really good memory for song lyrics. 

Too much COVID crap going on. Way too much. Make it all stop. Please!

As this Summer season is quickly coming to an end, I thought it might be fun to do a Throwback Thursday to the end of Summer 2017 when we bought Nathan his first bike. 

Happy eighth birthday, little dude. Your momma and I love you so much and are so proud of the kid you’re growing up to be. 

As Nathan turns eight years old in two days, I thought it appropriate to TBT back a few years to one of the first birthdays where he truly enjoyed the celebration and made it all about himself. His third.

For the most part, I've held things together emotionally during this whole pandemic. I've kept it together because I'm the one at home with Nathan a majority of the time because Katie does not have the option to work from home like I do. So I try to keep a strong front while I'm with him. 

Man, I’m really terrible at keeping up with these COVID Diary posts, aren't I? My goal was to get through 19 of them, for obvious reasons. At the rate things are going, I may still make that goal... even at a post every two months. Ugh. 

Nathan is a YouTube junkie. How he discovered it, I'm not sure. But he's there and he's really good at navigating around and finding something to watch.

Kids can be such little assholes.

I know I said that Nathan was doing really great with riding a bike. He is! Truly! But everyone can have a bad day, right?

Why, yes! Yes he can! (He changed the jelly beans into lollipops.)

Can one young boy change the world by planting a bag of jelly beans in the ground?

Nathan tore through the rest of his LEGO Batman Scuttler build like it was going out of style. He actually finished this on Monday and has since been playing the LEGO DC Super Villains game on the Switch, but that’s another story for another day.

We’ve begun a Shelter-at-Home project. No, not home renovation. We finally finished that damn bathroom today so I hope to be reno project free for a while. 

Seven years and two days ago, I snapped what remains one of my all-time favorite photos of Nathan. And it was purely by accident, too, that I took it. 

Given Nathan's recently developed love of Harry Potter, it's only right that today's On This Day photo in Facebook for us is...

Nathan’s been editing his Spotify playlist a bit lately. Removing some old songs he doesn’t want to hear anymore, adding some new ones, reordering a little.