Walker Cade is such a gift! 7 years of life with him!

Seven years of Walker's life has passed without being recorded here in this blog. 😭😭 So much of his life HAS been recorded in other places like baby books, journals, daily planners, photo books, etc. But just not here. I don't know where to start or how to begin to recap the last 7 PRECIOUS years with Walker Cade, so I'll just type what comes to mind and rest easy that it's ok if it's not chronological, orderly, or neat and tidy. (just fyi- I'm completely devoted to spending this summer of 2025 to get caught up on pictures and memories here on this blog!! Hopefully, there will be many, many pictures and memories recorded after this post that catches us up on Walker's birth through present day! but in case I'm not successful, here's a blitz post of how amazing our lil' lump of sugar is!)

Walker is a gem. A precious, rare, beauty of a gem. We call him our little creator, because he is ALWAYS, every single day, creating something, whether it's a food concoction, a Lego creation, an invention to carry snacks from the kitchen up to the Lego landing upstairs, a solution to a problem, or a fun activity for the family. He is always creating. He's our dreamer, his head is in the clouds, he gets distracted easily, his heart is pure gold, he aims to please his parents, his mind is always in "invention mode", he is a home-body, and he's happiest when he gets to spend the whole day at home doing Legos. Walker is a gentle giant (he's 7 and almost as big as Brody, who's 11) and would never hurt a flea. Walker loves to keep up with his big brothers for a short time, but then he gets tired and travels at his own, slow speed. 

Walker is a homebody through and through. He has never been to a brick and mortar preschool or school (with the 2-week exception of when he did Mom's Morning Out for 2 weeks when he was about 2 years old, but it was such a painful experience for him - he missed his mommy SO MUCH - that I couldn't bear to make him do it again so we pulled him out). Walker was always been home with me as a baby and toddler, and now he's being homeschooled by me. I wouldn't trade these years at home with him for anything in the world! What a gift to keep him home and let him travel at his own speed, learn at his own speed, and spend his days with his family, working on Lego creations and making inventions. 

If you ask Walker his favorite food, he will tell you it's snacks. 😂 And it's legit true! Walker loves any food that's the color yellow and dreams about when he can have snacks again. We try to limit him, but because he's the youngest, I don't really care about snack limits anymore. (if ya know, ya know 😉)

Other than his family, Walker's two besties are Atticus Wolf and Declan Wright. Those 3 are hilarious together, and walker is double the size of either of them. Declan is pure ornery and Atticus is pure sweet and when they get together, it's a riot! They mainly see each other at church and at CC- it's so fun!

Walker was born in Newnan, Georgia and we spent his first 5ish years in our Renwick house in Senoia. It was a BLAST! We spent almost every day on Happy, our golf cart, riding to the playground or the neighborhood pool or to Beeze Freeze. It was such a dreamy childhood for him. When he was 5ish, we moved to our house in the woods on Vaughn Road. Talk about a boy paradise!!! It has been a dream!! We have chickens, a trampoline, zip line, tree houses, huge magnolia climbing trees, a slack line, hunting traps, bikes, skateboards, corn hole, pickleball, spikeball, swing, the banjo stage, twinkle lights, etc. It has been a dream raising our little menfolk here at Vaughn Road!

Bear was Walker's big gift from Nana when he turned 7! Bear is Walker's beloved hamster (aka a glorified rodent who escaped and lived in our kitchen wall for 36 hours and to whom I give all the credit for destroying the wires on our dishwasher, thereby necessitating that we spend $1,000 of our cold hard cash to replace said dishwasher). And Walker loves this rodent so much.

Smashing his adult front tooth to smithereens this January while helping me check the mail one Wednesday afternoon has been Walker's biggest injury to date. Let's hope it stays that way for a while! 

Being read to is a favorite pastime of Walkers. He loves Frog and Toad, Mouse Soup, Mercy Watson the pig, Zach's Alligator, Chris Van Dusen, Billy and the mini monsters,

and many other fun old-timey readers.

Whenever Walker sees a flower, he immediately picks it and gives it to me. It melts my heart so much!! He's always on the lookout for flowers to gift to me. One day, I looked over to see him on his belly on the floor of the Dollar Store, using his arms to sweep out all the tiny, extremely dusty artificial flower petals from under the shelves to give to me. I cherish those dusty flower petals more than anything! He often picks magnolia flowers from our back yard each morning after bible time and comes give them to me, his face alight with joy in pleasing me. What a gift this sweet boy is!

We have traveled many places together, some of which include the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Misty Mountain in VA, Kansas to see the Wolfs, Lakewood Camping Resort in Myrtle Beach quite a few times, Ohio, Fort Meyers, many tent camping places, etc! Life has been full and awesome and beautiful!!!