Making the Most of Every Opportunity

Spending today looking back and thanking God for the incredible gift of our firstborn son. He waited two extra weeks beyond my due date and only came because the doctors went in after him. He cried continuously for weeks. He was a projectile vomiter. And yet the JOY he brought into our lives is indescribable. How was this 6 years ago? I'm so very thankful for our solid helper. Our always smiling, incredibly tall, son with gorgeous eyes. The kind hearted big brother who leaves his friends to be sure his little brother has a playmate. The quality time guy who thanks us for playing games and reading books with him and tells us he knows we love him because we do. Our silly, funny kid. The boy who asks hard questions and does not jump quickly as he seeks for himself to see if he believes that God is the loving, true Savior that we've taught him He is. Oh what a joy and privilege to be his Mommy. Thank you Lord for this good and perfect gift from you to our family.

Next week we will celebrate our firstborn's 6th birthday. I have so many fun memories of my own birthdays growing up and some traditions I still follow (like my yellow cake with chocolate frosting), so I knew I wanted our family to really enjoy celebrating God's good gift of each other on our birthdays. Here are our main traditions: 1) Cake- each of us pick out what cake we want and get it on our birthday. Andy likes ice cream cake, Jimmy wants fun cupcake designs, and Caleb is still young enough that I make whatever sounds fun to me! 2) Notes with specific things we love in that person. Andy and I write them on small index cards for each boy (and each other on our birthdays) and we have them tell us what they love about each other and write out one from each of them. We try to do this in cards we send to family far away on their birthdays as well. 3) Party Favor/Present hunt- Since birthday parties go by quickly and sometimes we can miss the favors and presents for our ...