* When my son was 5 I took him to the my parent’s dairy farm. He walked around in amazement at the big equipment and all the animal stuff. I tried to impress him that grandpa had to work very hard to make the farm work and get enough milk to sell. In the barn he asked what the big ladder going into the loft was for. I told him that was where Grandpa kept the hay to feed the cows. He looked at it for a minute and then said, “It must have been very hard for those cows to climb that ladder.”

* Nature is just amazingly creative. Who would have thought of putting a fly swatter on the end of a cow?

@ When I was notified of my long-awaited promotion to Marine Corps major: I quickly purchased a set of gold oak leaves, even though the actual ceremony was months away. “Look, Logan”, I said to my five-year-old son. “These are what daddy will be wearing in a few months”. As he stared into the box, Logan wore a puzzled expression, he looked up at me and asked, “Earrings?”