Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

We celebrated Grandpa's Birthday late this afternoon the best way we know how - with semi-homemade goodies that encourage good coffee drinking, at one of our favorite haunts, at our usual table. The kids made Grandpa a mug with crafts and drawings and writing inside. I wrote down a few of the reasons they love him and it was hard to keep up amongst the shouting of "He tickles me! He reads to me! We play together! He sings to me! He sleeps next to me until I'm dreaming!"

The kids' voices echoed my own inside my head. As we stood on the corner of the street after dinner, amongst the laughing college students back in town and the guy playing his guitar on the sidewalk with a jar set out in front of him, my dad stood there smiling at his grandkids running around (all hopped up on rootbeer), and Jeremy talking about fishing adventures and my mom and I talking a mile a minute about the upcoming week and my dad mosies over and drops a bill in the guitar players jar. And for a second everything got quiet in my head and I stood there smiling at this Grandpa we're celebrating and I felt so glad I got my time in first. My time when I was little and growing up, and skiing together by ourselves and my dad coming up to Bellingham to drive me home when I was so sick with my first flu away from home, and riding a bike without training wheels for the first time down our street, and listening to Cream and learning about music, and learning how to ride a horse and hike by candlelight, I got to do all these things with him. And now my kids get to experience that too. We're thankful we get to celebrate your Birthday, Grandpa. Wishing you the happiest of happy this year.