Let me brag a little bit.......

about my husband.

No joke. He brings tears to my eyes. I see the way he is with our children, and I cannot be more grateful for such a loving, yet silly silly daddy. There are often days that I find myself jealous of how much he just "lets go" of his day to get on their level.
He's fun, he's loving, he's supportive and most of all he's always there to just be their daddy.
He does "whoa whoa wee" with Ezra (a cool flip from his shoulders to the ground-a name made up by Ryan and Ez) Just tonight her and I were sitting on the front steps, watching Ryan put a bike seat together at 8:30pm-doing everything in his power to try and take her on ONE bike ride before it got dark....well, she got on my back, wrapped her arms around my neck and said "whoa whoa wee mama!"-I looked at Ryan and said "I can't do whoa whoa wee, I don't know how to do whoa whoa wee".....
Rylee has been BEGGING us to get bikes, so we could go on bike rides together as a family. After putting it off for about the whole summer, we ventured out tonight and got a bike for Ryan so now him and Rylee can tear up the hood on their bikes this fall-now that Rylee can ride without training wheels, it's way too hard to keep up with him while walking with Ez in the stroller or wagon! We see many bike rides in our future!

Ryan can recite more children's books than I can. He sings about Rhinos and Elephants.

He is a man of God. He reminds us to pray before dinner, to take extra time to carry on with more than "Now I lay me down to sleep......" at bedtime. He prays for random stuff. Stuff that God probably chuckles at a bit. He's thankful for second chances.

He has a spreadsheet for everything.

While I am working late, the kids get a visit to the park almost daily.

He bakes cookies. (Better than me I am told) SHOCKING right? : )

When life is feeling "rushed" he reminds me without even saying anything that I need to just slow down. Life is way too short, and has made me understand that we'll never get these days back with our children. I never want to look back and say "I wish I would have......" I understand there will always be days where I feel like I didn't do enough-or I rushed through bedtime to have 10 extra quiet minutes before bed. I know that if they get to bed 15 minutes late-or even an hour-they will be FINE. If Ezra doesn't want to eat all of her dinner-SHE WILL BE FINE. If Rylee pees on the bathroom floor, IT'S FINE. And if Ryan washes some of my clothes with towels, it's FINE : ) Those are little things, compared to what big things we really could be dealing with....I have had a lot of people say things to me like "Wow, you're always smiling", "Are you ever NOT happy", "I can't see you ever stressed".....well, I must admit and i told Ryan today-that I am sorry that i have a happy face to EVERYONE around us, and that I must take my stress, anxiety and not so "happy moments" out on him.....I will work my best on balancing life out, and if something is stressing me out, let it go or take it up with what's stressing me out. I am envious that my husband can be the fun dad, the disciplinarian, (that's a word right?) the crazy one, loving one all at the same time....and it's rare that I see him raise his voice with the kids-so when it happens, it's almost as if my heart gets a little bit sad-because that's not the norm'-but it's a good middle of the road where he's at. No one is perfect, everyone has flaws-but I have to just say that we are pretty thankful for the man of our house! : ) He's pretty darn close.