Happy Birthday Baby

Today we honor the day my bride, the love of my life, Jeanne-Ann's birthday. I love this woman so much it's crazy. I have gotten myself worked up before thinking how hard life would be without her. Not a thought I ponder much on. The other side of that, the side with how amazing life is as a result of her, I do ponder often. Much of it is the little things. If you are in love, you know what I mean. The longer we know each other the more amazing those things become too.

I love to laugh with Jeanne-Ann. She makes me laugh a lot. She is fun. She is sneaky. She loves to play tricks. I love when she has tried to pull something over on me and I realize it. That laugh. That is awesome! She gets a lot of that from her dad, which I love. I love how we both cried at the Christmas Eve service when we it hit us, separately, that we never thought we would get to Christmas without having the referrals of our children. I love how she prays for me to respond to certain things and I do. I love that she buys bagels from our favorite local bagel shop and then cuts the whole bag of bagels for me ahead of time. I love what a great teacher she is. This year she is full time and it is a lot of work, but she knows that it is helping to bring our babies home and that makes it worth it. I love that she loves the more difficult kids.

I love how she loves on our kids. She is soooo good with them. She is an incredible mother. God created her well for that role. We talk about strategies in raising our kids and she is constantly coming up with new things for us to be doing or not doing that make so much sense. Candy day, for example, is genius. On Saturdays our kids can eat all the candy they want. The rest of the week it's (pretty much) off limits. As a result, they don't eat a ton of candy on Saturday either. Summer Soda is another great idea. We don't drink a ton of soda in the house and in the summer she makes it special on certain days. Not that they don't have soda throughout the year, it just makes it special. Part of that is building memories. We talk a lot about that. We want our kids to have great memories of growing up. We want them to remember how "we would always do..." More than remembering "that one time." The special occasions are VERY important, but the consistent stuff is huge. That is important to her...and it is important to me.

The way she loves me is amazing. I learn from her every day. I want to love like she loves. I want to care like she cares. She helps balance me so well. I would love to be out every night with people. If we could have a party like we had last night every night I would get so pumped about it. She is very different from me. In that respect she would love if we hung out at home and just did family stuff. As a result, we "compromise" and end up being better for it. She knows I need to be with people, but she also knows I need to chill and slow down and just be for a while. My soul needs that too.

I seriously don't know what I would do without Jeanne-Ann in my life. My life is better because of her. Every part. My day is different because she is in my life. I breathe better because of her. I smile bigger because of her. I love deeper because of her.

So, I celebrate and honor you today babe. I thank God and your parents from bringing you to this world! Happy birthday My Love!

40 Days of Blog

Tonight we had dinner with some of our dearest friends in the world. We all decided it would be fun to do a "40 Days of Blog" together. Essentially we are committing to posting one blog per day for the next 40 days starting today! As soon as Bex mentioned this I was ALL IN! It is exactly what I need. I want to blog more and I need motivation and accountability. I love to blog, it is just one of those things that can be hard to set time aside to do. Now I am doing it! You can hold me accountable to. Interaction is a great thing (hint..feel free to comment). I love that blogging can open conversations on all sorts of topics.

I am sure there will be plenty of adoption conversation along the way, as that is what 3 out of 5 of us are doing and it consumes a lot of our thought energy. It will also have plenty of daily life mixed in, as that is what my blog tends to be about. Hopefully there will be something that will be thought-provoking and interesting to you as well. I expect that there will be some give-aways happening. I won't reveal yet, but I think someone from this team will be doing one today. So keep a look out.

Want to read along? Check out the "Team."
Bex Mann.
Michelle Unwin.
and Steve Unwin (but Steve will start his 40 days on the 1st of September)

Here we go!!!
    My beautiful bride, Jeanne-Ann is blogging, but not yet ready for 40 days. Encourage her and comment on her blog!