For me, facial hair is sort of a hobby. It takes me about a month to grow a beard, two months if I’m going for the viking look. I don’t really have a preference one way or another, but I tend to stay clean shaven more often than not.

However, I did grow one for my recent trip to New York.

While I was away, J and the kids took a plane to go visit her family. We left at the same time but I returned a day or so earlier than they did.

All of this has just been long way of saying that we’d been apart for eight days. For me, eight days is a long time to be away from my family. The longest, in fact, that I’ve gone. So when I went to the airport to pick them up, I bought a big chocolate thing that was filled with smaller chocolate things and had the words “Welcome home!” written on it.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited.

When they finally arrived, C was barely awake. Fortunately, his little brother happily came into my arms.

As we looked at each other, he reached over to pat my beard, smiled tenderly, and said “Gus!”

Who’s Gus, you ask? Well, that would be the dog.