Thursday, February 23, 2012

Candlelit nachos...who knew??

My baby turned four today.  Blows me away - four already.  It seems just yesterday I delivered him, at Swedish in Seattle - in the very same delivery room as my sister in law, a handful of months before.  Don was weeks away from a deployment, and James Robert Rhine made his big debut.  Four years  ago today.

Since that day in 2008, this family of mine...we've been through a lot.  Ups, downs, and in betweens.  Smiles, tears, separations and a handful of homecomings.  But you know it's funny, no matter how hard you may try - no matter what - you just can't stop time.

This fourth birthday of James' falls during a time of family separation.  As did his third.  Aaaand Paige's 7th.  And 6th.  The cool thing about this one though was SKYPE!  We have never had Skype at our disposal in such a way as we have for the last six months (and the next six too!).  We sat together, Paige, James and myself here in South Carolina, and at the head of the table, right there in between two lit tapers - was a laptop computer with Daddy's big ole' face on the screen.  He was eating nachos too - just like us.  We were together, celebrating the birth of one of our babies by candlelight. 

So romantic.  Who knew?

No real deep spiritual insight in the blog tonight.  No awakening, no *AHA* moment.  Just a romantic evening with all of the loves of my life.  Even in hard times, we are blessed and we know it.

James' fourth birthday will be the last one he has to spend away from his daddy for years and years to come.  The absolute coolest part is that I am not completely sure he'll end up ever remembering a birthday without him.  <3

Happy February 23rd...life is good!