Best of 2025: Favorite Payton Moment

If Logan is my little buddy, Payton is my heart. I just love the person she is becoming. She is a very girly girl. She loves makeup, she enjoys her Barbies, she calls her friends on her Chromebook and talks for hours. But she and I have our things. Obviously we have softball. I was so proud of her this season, especially for making the all-star team, and playing well in the games. I introduced Payton to Lord of the Rings this year (the movies). We watched all three, and she loved them. We also have music. She has her songs that she loves, but I can usually play stuff for her that she will enjoy. The most surprising for me was Our Lady Peace. I have heard her singing some of their songs when they come on in the car. But, our favorite song to sing together is “The Cave” by Mumford & Sons. We just jam out to it. We also played a lot of Let’s Sing on the Switch (until one of the microphones broke), and our favorite song from that was Vance Joy–“Riptide.” We had some pretty great battles over who did better.

This year I redid her bedroom. I would have said before that seeing her joy when it was finished was my favorite moment, but unfortunately, she leaves her room a mess most of the time, and has already damaged a few things, so I am not too thrilled about that. 

It was also cool that Payton decided to give basketball a shot. She never played before, but after watching Logan, and seeing some of her friends play, she decided to play. It has been fun watching her improve each practice and game. Her last couple games, the head coach praised her defensive play. She is still not the best dribbler, but she is working at it.

But, my favorite moment this year has been finding out that Payton is a good person. You always hope that your kids are not jerks, and the way they act at home, you sometimes wonder. When we went to her parent-teacher conference, her teacher said the normal positive things. My biggest concern was her talking (does she talk too much in class). The teacher said yeah, she can be a little chatty, but she is always good when told to stop. But then the teacher said something surprising. That Payton is basically her assistant, and if the teacher ever had to leave the room, Payton would probably step right in and take control of the class. There was also a cool thing before the school year started, when one of the parents messaged Lindsey to say that Payton and her son were chosen by the 2nd grade teacher to be in the same third grade class because of the way they always helped with the special needs kid in their class.