Tradition!!!

I'm three!  Thanks, Patty and Kim for your help!

Do you know what birthdays are?  A chance to CELEBRATE LIFE!  Everything is special on your birthday.  You wake up and have your birthday shower.  You enjoy a birthday breakfast (I favor strawberry Pop-tarts and hot cocoa on my big day) and a birthday drive to work.  You walk around with a birthday spring in your step and you know that the sun is shining especially bright because it is YOUR birthday.  On my birthday I take time to do things I particularly enjoy, like playing the piano, just for fun!  I talk to friends or family on the phone.  I play in the snow (gotta love January!).  I eat chocolate cake!!!!  Now, that is a tradition that began before I was even born!  My parents gave each of their four children a special cake on their first birthdays.  It was a homemade chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and cherry pie filling on top.  YUM!  Imagine a sweet one year old digging into that!  We have pictures of all four of us with chocolatey, cherry messes smeared all over our faces.  But, we all had BIG smiles and shining eyes for Photographer Dad who was capturing it all.  I still choose chocolate cake with chocolate frosting every year!  Birthdays are fun!  We get presents on our birthdays.  People sing to us on our birthdays.  Did you know the song, "Happy Birthday to you" is the most popular song in the entire world???!!!  I read that somewhere. 

January 14th, 2011

        On a more serious note, birthdays document another year of life - a year that we are truly blessed to live.  I have a friend who has cancer.  She'll have cancer the rest of her life.  She has children to raise, a husband to love, a life to enjoy.  She just wants to hang on for another birthday and then another and another.  She'll take all the birthdays she can get!  I am daily inspired by her.  We can't have birthdays every day, but we can appreciate each day as a gift from God.  I have an opportunity every morning to wake up and decide how I'm going to live my day.  Lord God, help me to be full of gratitude to You, full of love for the people around me, and full of peace in my heart.  Amen.