This guy.  He turned 11 years old yesterday.  I let him stay up until after midnight on Monday so that I could tell him Happy Birthday as soon as possible. His closest little tribe of people came with us to Atlanta to eat at Hard Rock Cafe and experience Lego Land. (I’ll share those pics this week). As you read this, I’m sure we are having LOADS of fun!

Someone PUH-lease tell me where the time goes? How can I be sitting on my front porch longing to bring him home from Guatemala one minute and celebrating his 11th birthday the next.  Because I swear to you, I only blinked. It happened that fast.

I posted a couple of pictures and wrote JP a little message on Facebook. He doesn’t have an account, but I thought it would be a fun way for him to read all the comments people left for him. After I wrote it, I thought to myself, “That’s something I should have posted on the blog.”  So, I’m going to copy/paste it here for you to read.

“It seems like just yesterday I was sitting on my front porch staring at baby photos of you on my laptop with tears streaming down my cheeks. I loved you long before I held you. You had my heart ❤️ long before you were in my arms. We brought you home from your beautiful country 10 years ago and TODAY we celebrate your 11th birthday! 🎉 🎈 🍪

Our life looks a lot different than the life I had planned for us. There are very few absolutes, but this one thing you can know for sure… you are treasured and loved more than you could imagine.”

And it’s 100% true. I can’t offer JP the world. I can’t promise him a lifetime of happy days. I have NO idea what the future holds for us.

But I can hug and kiss him every day. I can tuck him in at night for as long as he’ll let me. I can be here when he needs to talk. Or cry. Or hold him when he has a panic attack and tell him it’s going to be okay – because it always ends up OK. I can scratch his back, play endless games of Chutes & Ladders and take his temperature 15 times a day because he’s a hypochondriac. Yeah, I can do all those things.

I can promise to love him hard. 

And thank God every single day that he’s mine.