My Birthday

Sunday was my birthday. I had to spend the day pretending that it wasn’t. It made getting through the quiet times, and church, easier. Sunday night was the ordination service for a friend of ours, Philip Jones. Philip will graduate from Southern in December along with Josh. I was so happy to be at Philip’s ordination service, he and Stacy are such a sweet, God loving couple. I know that Philip will make an excellent pastor and some church somewhere is going to be very blessed to have him. The service was bittersweet for me though. My heart cried through the entire service. The last time I was at this type of ordination service it was for Josh, and Christy sat by his side that night just as Stacy was at Philip’s side last night.

To celebrate my birthday on Saturday afternoon Chris, Kyle and I went to a movie, The Town. It was good but you know, I hate it when movies make you root for the bad guy. Why do they do that? I don’t want to root for the bad guy. But I’ll tell you, it’s not hard when the bad guy is Ben Affleck.

After the movie we met the gang at Cheddar’s and I had a really nice birthday dinner. Which brings me to one of the highlights of my birthday – After the food arrived someone said, “Who wants to pray?” Both of Katy’s little arms went straight up in the air and she said, “OH, I DO!” (FYI- Katy is all of 3 years old.) You know, with kids you never know. Sometimes they want to pray and sometimes you can’t squeeze a prayer out of them for anything. But Katy seemed ready, able and certainly willing. Now, before I tell you the prayer there are two things you must know. Number one, Lori and Jim promise she wasn’t coaxed. They assure me she did this all on her own. And number two, and the most important, Katy LOVES her some Chris!!!!!! I swear that girl could knock an elephant over if she saw Chris standing on the other side of it. She blows right past me ALL OF THE TIME to get to her bestest friend. If it wasn’t so darn cute I might be a tad offended. The way she disses me is so obvious that even Brynn feels sorry for me and has told me that she would be my best friend. :) But on Saturday night Katy made my day with her sweet little prayer for me…….. “Dear Jesus, Thank you for this wonderful day. For Aunt Julie’s birthday. For cheesecake and for letting us come out for dinner. Amen!” Now, isn’t that just the sweetest thing EVER?!!!!

Dinner was followed by…….. Lori’s famous cheesecake! It was yummy, of course. I got lots of nice Thirty One stuff (purse, wallet, zipper pouch, key fob) from Chris and from Lori and Jim. And from my kids (Kyle, Josh and Kristen) I got a FIRE PIT!!!! I’m so excited. I’ve wanted a fire pit forever!!!!! I can not wait until the evenings get cooler and we can roast some marshmallows!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped to make my birthday special. That’s not an easy job these days but you guys are great and I love you all so much!!!!!!!!!

BTW – please don’t forget that we’ll all be ignoring my birthday next year!!!!!!

Blessed,
Julie