If you come here often you know I love to talk about my wife.  I try not to do it all the time so I am not THAT pastor that is always talking about his smokin’ hott wife (yes, hott with 2 t’s).  Don’t get me wrong.  She absolutely is.  SMOKIN’ hott.  But I try to broaden my horizons and blog subjects.

As you may also know we just had a major change in our calm, couple, married, do-what-we-want-when-we-want lives.  5 months ago a perfect little present wrapped in slobber, spit up and giggles joined us.  Well, my wife has really embraced her new role and is loving it!  She is officially a stay at home mom.  She now has the most important job she will ever have.  Being in ministry with me, she knows that we go through hard times and experiences in live for more than the “just because” reasoning.  So she has relaunched her blog as a full time mommy blogger!

For you guys out there, (apparently) mommy blogging is a big deal.  When we didn’t know what to do with our newborn issues, I would google and she would search mommy blogs.  Her answers were always better than what I came up with.  But now that she has refocused her efforts and is poised to take the mommy world by storm, I wanted to let you all know before you get swept up in it!

Go check out the all new The Mom Diggity.

Tell your mom.
Tell your wife.
Tell your friend’s wife.
Tell your maternity patients.

Trust me.  It’s the bomb diggity.  (Yeah, I said it.)

Sometimes I sit back and realize how insanely “lucky” I am.  Our family is.  My wife is.  My daughter is.  Last night was one of those nights.  Everything just kinda seems so heavy and I can’t help but be grateful for this life.

I have the most gorgeous wife.  She loves us and takes care of us.  My daughter seriously couldn’t be cuter.  She is smart and growing and healthy.  She loves me and thinks I’m funny.  You can’t beat that!  We live in a gorgeous town that we have been blessed to call home.  We get to see palm trees and ocean.

We have amazing families on both sides and love us and are there for us.  We have free internet and  cable.  We have vehicles that work properly and get us from point A to point B.  We get to support a young girl in Africa.  We live off of more than $1 a day.  We have clean water.  We have a God that loves and forgives us.

That’s just a glimpse of how I’m a “lucky” guy.  What about you?  How are you “lucky”?

One year and 2 days ago I gave my wife the best birthday gift I could have ever given her.  Because of the awesomeness of this gift we had to count it as her birthday and Christmas gifts all wrapped into one.  Even if that is the case and she had it to do all over again, I am sure she would do it in a heartbeat.

367 days ago my wife got the one thing she has wanted the most.  A little baby girl.  We didn’t know all that yet or any of the details at all, but needless to say, we had a pretty good birthday.  Fastforward to today.  My wonderful, amazing, sexy, awesome, and every other positive feminine descriptive word you can think of wife turns __ years old today.  (See that?  I didn’t even get myself in trouble for asking or telling a woman’s age!…That is a bad thing right?  Well, if not you can ask her yourself.)

KK, the last 3 or so years of my life with you have been the absolutely best.  I cannot begin to describe (except by beginning with that) how much I love, respect and cherish you!  (Can guys use the word cherish?)  Happy birthday, baby!  Sorry I ruined birthday presents for the rest of your life.  None of them will ever be as amazing as our little Jessi James!

I hope you have this much fun on your birthday this year!

…since I bragged on my wife.  That’s not cool.

My wife is gorgeous.  I don’t deserve her.  I don’t know why I have been blessed with her.  But she is so much more than just gorgeous.

My wife is sacrificial. – She gives and gives and gives and gives for us.  She has been through more pain and aching and pain than I think I could ever bear.  And she does it all out of love for those she loves.

My wife is loving. – She loves us through the good times and the bad.  She loves me even when I do stupid stuff and don’t know that I have upset her.  She loves me enough to want to work through any difficult situation we get in.  She loves the baby through the tears and spit up and screaming bottles.

My wife is supportive. – We have been through a lot over the past couple years.  We have seen highs and lows, changes upon changes.  But through it all she has never stopped supporting me.  She supports my ministry.  She supports my likes.  She supports my everything.  And that is all before we even get to how much she supports our baby girl!

My wife is an amazing mother. – Not only is she the things listed above for our daughter, but she is an amazing mother.  She is patient when the baby is screaming.  She is loving and playful when the baby is ready to play.  She teaches her and prays for her.  She takes amazing care of our little one.

I consistently wonder how in the world I got to have someone so awesome to be my best friend, love and support.  Guess I’ll never figure that one out.

Well, it’s been a while since I have posted a video of my baby girl, so this week, guess what!  Yup!  Here she is!  This video was actually from a few weeks ago and she has progressed so much since then.  It is a little difficult to get real good video of her because when a camera/iPhone is in front of her she locks onto it and gets distracted (as you can tell in this video).  But she is still ridiculously cute and hilarious.

If you are like me and like to watch videos of my daughter, go to KK’s YouTube channel and keep up with the new ones as they get posted!

I am so blessed.  I am blessed far beyond what I deserve.  I am blessed with a job.  With a huge family that supports me.  With beautiful surroundings.  With a dog that pees every time I get home because he is so excited to see me.  With material things.  With freedom.  With so many other things.

But more than all that l I am blessed with my wife and daughter.  I cannot physically write out all the ways that my wife is amazing.  I can’t physically do it.  She loves me.  Takes care of me.  Cooks for me.  Runs errands for me.  She is such a good mom, too!  She has an amazing ability to comfort our daughter.  She loves her.  Takes care of her.  Sacrifices so much for her.  I could not ask for more.  But I got more.  I have a little daughter who I can’t get enough of.  She is healthy and strong.  She has the most capturing smile and laugh.  I literally can’t get enough of it!  She smiles and laughs and I just want her to do it again!

I don’t know why I have been given so much.  I can’t imagine living without them now.  I don’t know why, but I am so blessed.

I love you, girls.

KK, mom, Dodie and Brenda,

Thank you for being you.  You are the women that shape our lives.  You hold us together and keep us standing up tall.  We like to think we are all big and bad, but deep down inside we know that without you all we are lost.

Thank you for taking care of us.
Thank you for laundry.
Thank you for clean bathrooms.
Thank you for home cooked dinners.
Thank you for the laughs.
Thank you for the late nights.
Thank you for the unending love.

We do not express it enough to you.  We love you so much.  But we are men and kids so we think flowers have us covered.  If we were smarter we would do so much more.  If we were smarter we would do so much more so much more often.  Some flowers and a poorly chosen card with “I love you” and our names scribbled on it just don’t do you justice.

But hey.  What can I say?  We are just a bunch of men and kids.  We don’t really know better.  At least it wasn’t another (bead)-M-(bead)-O-(bead)-M-(bead) bracelet this year.  Give it time.  We will get back to those!

A couple weeks ago I asked you all to join us in praying for some friends/family of ours that was trying to postpone early labor (29 weeks) for as long as possible.  Adam and Stacy did amazing and made it 31 weeks before Jackson was born.  He was still very early and has been on multiple machines for a while, but he is doing great!  Just wanted to keep you all informed.  Thank you so much for praying for them.  Please don’t stop because Jackson still has a long road to go.

Another thing that I know several of you have been praying for was Kara-Kae.  As I am writing this it is 3:30 AM and we just got home from the ER.  Monday evening she came down with a fever that didn’t let up at all until it finally broke for the first time Tuesday around 1 PM.  Just before it broke it made it up to 103.5.  We had a doctor’s appointment for the afternoon already so we went in and got some antibiotics.  After we came back home the fever came back again and so we headed off to the ER just after 11 PM.  KK enjoyed a nice IV cocktail, some blood tests and a looooot of waiting and fighting off the sleep, we finally were sent home with confirmation of the sickness we expected and more antibiotics.  So now we are home and starting the road to recovery.  Thank you all you late nighters who were up praying for us.

Thanks for being a part of our lives and caring for us enough to pray for us and love on us.

It’s amazing the changes in your life following your first child.  Of course many of them are expected or feared, but some are pretty powerful.  The one that has hit me the most and really affects the majority of my life is the area of priorities.

I now have a daughter who is dependent on me and KK and will be for a good 20 years (if not more).  Things are not the same as they were several months ago.  Before Jessi, life was pretty simple and I didn’t think about my priorities as much.  Of course I would put my wife above the rest, but not always.  There were games to be played on the iPhone.  There was basketball to be played.  Surf to be conquered.  Beach to be walked.  TV shows to watched at their regularly scheduled times.  Money to be spent on whatever.  But now things are different.

When your child arrives you are forced to reevaluate your to do list.  Does that game really need to be played?  Should a nap happen instead?  Should I honor my wife and empty the dishwasher?  Is that money going to something worth spending it on in light of the new changes?  Somethings I had to learn to say no to.  Others I had to begin to say yes to more than I did before.  Now the random games don’t get played as much.  The chores need to be done to help out a wife dealing with all kinds of new things.  The Jeep doesn’t need to have the pipes and lift (at least that’s what my good side is trying to convince me of).  The savings account for the baby needs to be built.  The blog doesn’t need a facelift.  The wife does need attention.

Learning to get priorities in line is a big deal.  When you get married you only start to learn that.  But then when a baby comes along, what you started learning gets pushed into high gear.  The earlier you figure out that family comes first and there are others that need to be cared for before your own wants, the better off you are.  You will be in a much better place when these major changes in you life happen.  Learn to prioritize now and you might not be quite so worn out when you get to this point…well, you will probably still be pretty tired, but at least your family will be properly loved and cared for!

One would argue that we have now been parents for almost 10 months.  I would definitely disagree with that.  Jessi has been with us and we have been her mommy and daddy from the beginning.  Parenting (for me) was pretty easy in the beginning.  Well for basically the first 9 1/2 months were pretty easy.  I didn’t have to do anything but take care of KK.

Then on March 25th everything changed.  I had been a daddy for months, but now the daddying was different.  Parenting before Jessi arrived consisted of feeding the wife, picking things up off the floor, rubbing the belly, and talking to Jessi.  Man, things have changed!  Parenting has now become what so many before us knew it to be already.

Diapers, feeding, crying, not sleeping, butt paste, screaming, rashes…

No Sleep, no TV, pacing the floor, weeping, gnashing of teeth, still not sleeping, insanity…

Did I mention that there isn’t much sleeping?  Hmmm.  Well, parenting is definitely harder than the first nine months.  We need a DVR we are so far behind on some of our shows.  That may have to change.  But as much as many of those things suck, it is well worth it!  The noises, the faces, the stretching, the flopping.  It’s all worth it.

Maybe one of these days the crying will slow down a bit and the sleep will commence.