we all just wanna be big rockstars!

i just returned from a weekend at home with my family. we celebrated my dad's 56th birthday! happy birthday, dad! the whole family went out to dinner on saturday night. it was a lot of fun, and great food! black angus in yakima...mmm! we had good conversation and lots of laughs. here's a conversation between my dad and my 10 year old niece that had us all laughing pretty hard. for those of you who know my dad, you know he teases...well, this is what happens...

cassadie: i gotta go to the bathroom.
papa: they don't have a bathroom for you.
cassadie: what?
papa: they have a men's and a women's, but none for children.
cassadie: i fall under the category of women. (puts hands on hips) i am a woman in training.

let me brag on my niece for a little bit here. like i said, she's ten, which means she's in the fourth grade. for fun, this little girl does algebra problems that her mom brings home from work (she teaches math at a high school and now at a college as well). we're talking, order of operations, variables, ratios, percentages, stuff i still struggle with. cassadie often talks in ratios. (ex: if you ask her if she was good, she might say "oh, about 65%) like i said before...geniuses breeding geniuses. or maybe nerds breeding nerds, it's hard to decipher. either way, it's ridiculous. my sister says she's trying to get cassadie ready to take pre-algebra early so that she won't be bored in math class. crazy! i also got to watch cassadie play basketball. it's fun to watch, but extremely stressful. all of a sudden the outcome holds so much more importance. cass played well and i got to watch her smile proudly as she made one of her foul shots. she's getting to be a pretty good player. i'm proud of her. i won't talk about how amazed i was to hear her singing along to nickelback with her dad on the way home from the restaurant. so, just to remind us all that she's still a little girl, i thought i would share a picture she gave me while i was home. here it is...