Happy Birthday Megan!

Today was Megan's Birthday. She is eleven years old! We love celebrating Birthdays and were thrilled that her birthday landed on the holiday Monday this year. She was born on the holiday Monday. Any of you Moms out there will know there are some pretty specific memories attached to the birth date/arrival of your children. Holding Megan and looking out the hospital window, watching little children play in a park across the street on a very sunny day is one of my memories.
Megan was very reluctant in deciding to come into this world. We worked long and hard to get her to join us! I laugh a bit (a very little bit!) at that recollection when connecting her delivery to her character. She definitely plays it safe. She is reluctant. Although that is a detriment in some ways it is definitely a gift in others. She often thinks through her choices quite thoroughly.
Last night as Megan was fighting sleep, we were getting her choice of Birthday meals ready for the day (a tradition of ours I might have shared on an earlier post). The dishes smelled so spicy, so flavourful. Megan has developed a great sense of taste. My Birthday prayer for her is that she will develop that great sense of taste in many areas of her life. That she will taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). That His Word will be sweeter than honey to her mouth (Psalm 119:103), or spicier than a pickle! Or more exciting than the flavour of a jelly belly bean! Even though life can be hard - as she has discovered over the past year - God is good and what He does is good (Psalm 119:68). His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8) and He uses situations and experiences we wouldn't dream of using for good and refines us as we trust in His goodness for EVERY situation. I pray that she would follow hard after God.
I love Megan and all that she and her siblings have brought to my life.




Yes, you are seeing correctly. Megan is "crying" in this picture. Dave's family has a tradition of singing several Birthday songs and one of them - in beautiful minor harmonies sings "pain and sorrow fill the air, people dying everywhere, happy birthday!"

In case you are wondering, Megan chose Italian soup stew (her favourite ingredients are the spicy sausage, cheese filled tortellini and pickle juice) with sour dough bread for lunch and butter chicken, oven fried rice (I know we are mixing our ethnic foods here but it's all very good together), asparagus and naan bread for supper. For dessert she settled on homemade ice cream sandwiches - brownies with Skor bar ice cream. A real hit - Alexander has already called it for his Birthday.