Happy Birthday to Wayne!

Happy Birthday to Wayne! He’s catching up with me today by turning 37. I thought I would share some ways I am thankful for Wayne.

He is a great husband, so thoughtful and sweet to me. In our seven years of marriage, he has never raised his voice to me, has never spoken an unkind word toward me, or even jokingly put me down for anything. This is so much more than I can say for a lot of men. His words are those of encouragement and often complimentary. He often greets me in the mornings by saying “Good morning, beautiful.” even when I KNOW I don’t look beautiful. Who does when you first roll out of bed?

I love that he is so intelligent and knowledgeable about so many things. I can ask him almost anything that I’m uneducated or curious about and he will usually know the answer, and not make me feel dumb for not knowing. He’s sort of like my own personal search engine.
There are no household chores that he will not do. He’s a great cook, he will do laundry, and even clean the bathrooms. I will never forget when we lived in San Francisco how he would sort and haul all of our laundry to the Laundromat two blocks away. This was an every Saturday occurrence when I was pregnant with Micah and then after he was born. Now we have the luxury of having a washer and dryer in our house!

Wayne loves God and His word and is a gifted teacher of it. He has always been diligent about spending time with God, even if it means rising very early in the morning to do it.

And of course, he is a great father to our precious boys. He helps take care of them in so many ways and is so fun and silly with them. It blesses my heart to see how he loves them.
I know I haven’t exhausted the list, but these are a few of the things that came to mind.

Scary incident

Yesterday as Micah was eating his snack, he started choking. I had given him a small piece of raisin bread. When we give him bread, we have to give little pieces at a time or else he will grab the whole slice and shove it in his mouth. He loves bread and doesn’t yet have the concept of biting off a little at a time. I thought that I had placed the bread out of his reach and turned to do something quickly. He started choking and I could tell it was not just a cough or two and then it would be okay. He had a look of panic on his face and I could tell his breathing was obstructed. So, I had a moment of fear mixed with determination. I got him out of his chair and prayed “Oh God! Help me!” and started doing the Heimlich Maneuver. A huge wad of the bread came out in his mouth and I fished it out. I sat on the floor and started sobbing because it was so scary. I think Micah thought I was laughing and so he started laughing hysterically.

We had just learned earlier in the day that a former roommate and friend of Wayne’s from Nebraska and his wife had lost their 15 month old son on Monday morning following a horrible accident at church. He swallowed a nail in the church nursery and his breathing and heart activity stopped for 30 minutes. Apparently, he fought for several hours but had brain swelling and his organs began to shut down.

I had been praying for them intermittently throughout the day. I can’t imagine their heartache and unspeakable grief. It just reminded me once again how life is so fragile. People can be doing routine things every day and something tragic comes out of nowhere. Pray for the Rhodes family in Salt Lake City if you think of it.

Mad Cowboy

Friday night we went to the fall festival (or Hallelujah Halloween, as Wayne likes to call it) at Grand Avenue Baptist Church. This is the church we have been visiting for quite some time. It was quite a big production, held in one the parking lots of the church. There were hayrides going on, pony rides, live music, bobbing for apples, and several other games. They had chili dogs, smores, popcorn, and cotton candy, and they had about 15 cars backed in with each containing a laundry basket or something similar filled with candy. They had a nice little system going in which each child had a box checked off at each car they went to so as to avoid multiple visits to each car. We stayed long enough to eat hot dogs, look around a bit, and let Micah get some candy out of just a few cars. Ok, let’s be honest, it’s Mom that wants the candy. Micah is only fascinated by the packaging of the candy, he doesn’t realize there’s something wonderfully delicious and so bad for you inside.

We borrowed the cowboy outfit from a friend here for Micah to dress up for his school party on Thursday. He was none too thrilled about us dressing him in the vest, chaps, boots and hat. Having experienced this on Thursday morning, we waited Friday night until we were in the church parking lot to dress him in all the attire. I had the camera ready just as Wayne was finishing up, so that’s the reason for the mad cowboy shot. Hilarious, isn’t it? The hat only lasted on his head for about 30 seconds. Poor kid, why do we torture him just to make him look so cute?

Gabriel was content to ride around in his stroller and I snapped the great close up shot of him smiling.