Grandparents who read this blog will know what I’m talking about, but some of them might be likely to say, “So what’s the big deal?”

You’ve known for some time that my wife and I relocated from the Texas Panhandle to the Metroplex essentially for a single reason: We want to live near our granddaughter, who’s now 5. We want to be a significant part of her life.

Today we reaped part of that reward. Yeah, I know it’s not a huge deal to grandparents who’ve had countless exposures to this kind of joy. It’s still fairly new to us. So, I want to take just a moment to share it here.

We took Emma to a children’s fair at the Fairview Town Center. They had rides, various exhibits and activities for children. It was inexpensive. The weather was lovely. Emma had spent the night with us, so we walked with her this morning to an event we were told had been planned for Halloween, but the weather rained them out.

Emma got her face painted; she played with animals at the petting zoo; she rode a pony; she got to climb one of those bouncy-house contraptions and then slide down the other side.

She couldn’t get enough of it.

This event today reminded my wife (Grandma) and me of the wisdom of our move from way up yonder to this community. It is to bond more tightly with our precious little one.

We are acutely aware she won’t stay this age for long; we did rear two sons into adulthood, so we’ve been through the rapid-rate time travel associated with watching children grow into adulthood. We just felt the urge some time ago to get here and enjoy as many experiences like this as we can.

Time surely will bring changes to all of us … eventually. For now and for as long as is humanly possible, we are going for the grandparenthood gusto.