Top 37 Rick Memories

Sometimes you just can't think of a birthday gift (or afford something delicious like a Land Rover, motorcycle parts, or even a nice shirt, for goodness sakes ), so you give what you can. In this case, my words.

Baby, here our my Top 37 Rick Memories (clearly not an all-inclusive list):

1. 3rd grade. Newton, Iowa. Berg Elementary. Mrs. McGinn's class. I get my name on the board (the only time ever) because your cute little 3rd grade self won't quit talking to me!

2. 4th grade. I keep the valentine you give me (along with the whole class, but it sounds so much sweeter if I kept just yours - whoops. See 6th grade for the actual sweetness.)

3. 6th grade. You move away, but first you hand me a pink little piece of paper (class pass) with your name and date on it. I never throw it away.

4. Seven years later,  you knock on my mom's front door and pick me up in those torn jeans and yummy jacket and perfect hands that drive that old worn down car.

5. Later that same night, you make me a ring out of a straw wrapper and put it on my finger. For. Fun. But then you really marry me 8 months and 11 days later.

6. Seeing your face rescue me after hours stuck beneath our box spring.

7. Your love for Adam. It became contagious. Your love for music. Each song brings me back to Florida highways and blaring music.

8. The feeling I got every time we walked into your grandma's house, watching you be adored and loved was warm, filling, comforting, confirmation that you. are. precious.

9. The way you literally poured drool out of your mouth and on to my shoulder in the grocery store while flinging random food into our cart. I think I handled your occasional hilarious insanity *fairly* well.

10. Birth. (Well conceiving, too.) Ok, not birthING, just the slimy sweet newborn himself & seeing the first time you held a baby, ever at all.

11. Knowing that you were man enough to go to the Mommy Class before leaving the hospital, assertive enough to track down the lactation consultant, and nervous enough to drive home super slow (we all know this never happened again).

12. Late nights nursing with you by my side every time, filling my water jug with ice water, just like the doctor said.

13. Moving. 14 "homes" in 17 years. (One for 5yrs and one for 2, so . . .  really more like 15 homes in 10 years)
Um. Are we gypsies?

14. That time when I had shoved a big ole dresser on to the itsy bitsy porch for a few weeks to sand it down, paint it, then pondered knobs for weeks before finally spending too much for the cutest ones . . . only to have you and Bryan stand it UP in the back of a truck while moving DOWN the street . . . and seeing the boards all flattened in the back of the truck. You guys managed not only to flip it out of the truck but to scratch every-single-knob.  I'm over it. I am. Really.

15. Your hands. Your perfect hands. Your exactly perfect hands totally meet my insane hand standards. (Don't ask. Just know.)

16. Watching you teach our first youth group. Watching you get all passionate about the things that matter most. Watching you be faithful behind the scenes, on the stage, and in each moment, public or private.

17. Um, taking a whole bunch of teenagers to camp summer after summer and watching you guide them, rile them up, get them thinking, play like a crazy kid, scare Jorge to death, lose your swim trunks being pulled by a rope . . . you know, just all the weeklong loveliness. I miss it and cherish it.

18. Hearing you sing. Anytime. Especially to the babies.

19. Watching you cry as Grey's little lip was being sown up. You lovely softy.

20. Birth.

21. Birth.

22. Birth.

23. Birth. (Mad dash to out-of-order things I love)

24. Listening to your full-blown panic mode at the mention of "It's a girl." Ha. Love it. Will never forget it. (Note: I'm taking much pleasure in your extreme anxiety. So sorry! It's automatic & I can't stop.)

25. We argue big but love even bigger.

26. I don't know how others manage, but I do know that our ugly can't be hidden, not 24 hours a day after all these days. So I love that we can be ugly and know the ugly was a moment and this love is a lifetime.

27. Those gray/white whiskers popping up. Um, love. Just love.

28. The fact that you believe in me more than I believe in myself, which triggers my confidence. Bless you for that.

29. The fact that I know every single day that you not just love me but adore me and haven't stopped loving me for a moment is my favorite, favorite, favorite. I don't know how I got you.

30. One day in February 2007.

31. Driving down the coast and spending our 10th anniv. day in St. Augustine. (Um, I vote our first real adult honeymoon vacation sometime before we die, btw.)

32. All the almost daily "wrestle-fights" with our boys. The gentleness that you have with flipping the new babies around while juggling the full beast mode attacks of the older three is simply astounding.

33. Watching you embrace the criticism, stand firm in the quakes, and not let people define you or let negativity crush your spirit.

34. Seeing God use you. I love so many of these. Watching God speak to you, soften your heart so you can be used to soften others' hearts, seeing you pray in utter dependence on God to touch a life, perform a miracle, show up, and how you never shy away from that faith.

35. Seeing you seek out Godly men to learn from. Always being teachable . . . learning and changing through all these years.

36. Breakfast. Omelettes and bacon and a kitchen towel thrown over your shoulder with pans here and there, eggs cracking, plates of chopped up anythings, and calling out our kids'  names to grab their plates. This, I love.

37. Listening to you laugh, the red-faced, can't stop, tears start coming laugh.