Random Thoughts

• Matt really wanted to take Mary to London to visit Alex, Liz, Andrew, and Kristi. He talked to me about it on several occasions.
• Matt and Mark playing pick up basketball in the driveway over the years with their friends - made me feel older than I should have felt!
• Watching the Simpsons with Matt. He seemed to have a special laugh that he only used then. Infectious. Soon the whole family would be hysterical.
• Matt and Mary were so happy playing Guitar Hero at the family vacation at the beach this summer. Entertained us for hours.
• Matt, and in years to follow, Mark were both so pumped to be running their respective parts of stage crew at West Forsyth High and were really into it. Terry and I went to each production - they were all good. Matt stepped out of his comfort zone and actually acted in a couple of productions. Terry and I couldn't be more proud of our sons. Stage crew is one of the few commonalities they shared. I'm glad they did.
• Matt, Mark, Terry, and me chasing each other around the yard of our house in NJ with Super Soakers, water hose, and buckets of water in the summertime...a variation on the same was chasing each other around the yard with the Lazer Tag guns. Terry and I did pretty well with the water, but I was awful at Lazer Tag. Always the first one out. Who do you think was the winner?
• Matt, Mark, and I spent hours and hours in the cold, gray, dreary winter weather in NJ building a luge course down the ravine at the back of our yard. It's amazing that none of us got seriously hurt sleding down the 70 yard course of ice, snow, and gigantic boulders in a metal saucer. Terry was afraid for all of us, but we had a blast
• Matt loved to play against us in tv Jeopardy in our family room. He was actually very good. Terry repeatedly encouraged him to try out for the show.
• As soon as Matt graduated from Elon he would show up with his dog Ginger at the end of a work week and hang with us for a couple of hours then be off on an adventure. Sometimes it was out of the blue from our perspective. I envy his spontaneity. We'd take care of Ginger and then he would show up again and hang with us for a while and we'd get to hear all about what he did. Later on this evolved to him and Mary dropping the dogs off and we got to know and love both Mary and Gracie.
• I miss some of the simplest things: getting a short email from him with a link to some website, talking to him on my way home from work, him calling to ask me a question, me calling him to ask a question, discussing popular tv shows, watching him use his iphone, being scared to death in the m3