Surprises are my favorite things. Only rarely am I truly surprised because I always figure it out. This condition is a challenge for my husband. Bless.his.heart. - I say that in honor of our southernness. However, he met the challenge head-on for my birthday this past Monday and, after having to throw me off here and there with my many questions, he surprised me! YAY!

To kick off my "birthday week," as Ryan has chosen to call it, the children and I spent sometime Monday morning doing random acts of kindness. We had so much fun leaving little tokens of kindness in random places - we filled drink machines with money, left dollar bills hiding in the dollar store, baked goodies for neighbors and bought breakfast for a couple. It filled our hearts with joy! My "birthday week" has flown by entirely too fast and has been filled with basketball practices, baseball games, ballet....and, SPEECH. Yes, our MK has been in speech every Tuesday and Thursday morning for the past year and a half at our local school. Today I met with her therapist as well as other facilitators and we all agreed that MK has met her goals and no longer needs speech therapy! She is thriving! She loves school and loves her friends though we are a bit concerned that she talks mostly about the boys :) And we know she is listening and learning....example A - today I was taking her to ballet. It is very quiet in the car, I was thinking and I really thought maybe she was asleep. Out of the blue she says, "I think he was from Spain." Now, I was thinking of every one possible that she could be talking about and when I couldn't figure it out I said, "He was from Spain? Who?" And she said, "Christopher Columbus, that man that got on the big boat and thought he was going somewhere but came here instead." Yep, she listens. And we are proud of this little one and so happy she is with us!