Happy Birthday Week, Jon!

Now that I'm in recovery from a yucky cold and pretty much through the morning sickness, energy and motivation for things other than survival are slowly returning to me :-) We are in the midst of celebrating Jon's birthday week. I am loving getting some family traditions established... I haven't given traditions much thought in the past but was quite inspired last year by Noel Piper's book: Treasuring God in our Traditions. It has been so much fun this week putting up our 'family heirloom' birthday banners ("Happy Birthday Dad") and also starting our new tradition of a string of balloons - one per year for each year of a family member's life. Along with the age for that year, we write the city that birthday was celebrated in. (Thanks to my friend Jennie for this idea!) Seeing 35 balloons strung along the wall with the various cities Jon has celebrated in was quite special. He thought so too :-) Unfortunately, we had to raincheck having guests over on Jon's actual birthday as I was not well enough and didn't want to spread my germs to others, but we enjoyed a lovely night together anyway. This Saturday night we will have some friends over for a bit of a belated celebration. And now an Emmi story: As she was playing happily this morning we got her attention and told her it was time to sit on the potty. She held her breath and did her 'straining' face and even made a little grunt... and then smiled widely, just in case we had missed the joke :-)