January 13th is a very special day in our family. It was the day (3 years ago) that Lauren Jessica Richard was born. She has become our little "princess". While the day did not feature a lot of "fan-fare" it still ended up a very nice day. It began with church. She learned "Jesus Loves Me" and has been singing it throughout the day. THANKS TO KURT, ALICIA WEBER and also to NANCY ROSE (and any other volunteers at LCC) who take the time to help shape our kids into followers of Christ.After church we joined several of our new friends to LCC and enjoyed a delicious Domino's Pizza and bread stick lunch. Our family just loves Pizza With The Preacher! It was nice to relax and share with folks that God has lead to LCC in the past few months.
This afternoon we all just "hung out" at home. It was nice. We watched football, played, laughed and just enjoyed being a family. At one point, the entire Richard family sat together on the couch, a special moment indeed.
This evening we were invited to Grandma and Grandpa Bell's house (thanks for the invite) but decided to decline because we had planned a special "Richard family only" evening out. We used gift certificates from Christmas and had a wonderful meal at Red Robyn! YUMMY! We realized that the last time we went to RR (about a year ago) we were not able to finish our meal because Lauren threw such a fit that we had to leave. HOW FAR WE HAVE COME IN A YEAR! Tonight she sat in the booth next to daddy and smiled, laughed, talked and just charmed everyone. Here is another victory tonight. It seems that EVERYONE at RR had a birthday tonight. The servers would come by, CLAP REALLY LOUD and sing a "happy birthday" song. You may say, "big deal" unless you know Caleb. He is terrified of clapping and anything doing with birthday songs. Tonight, he didn't let it phase him in the least. It was loud and frequent and he just ignored it. WOW! Praise the Lord. Now, we didn't test this victory by telling them it was Lauren's birthday, but I believe the time will come.
We ended our evening out with ice cream at UDF! Caleb had a chocolate cone with Chocolate ice cream, Jen had peanut butter cookie dough, I had a mix of butter pecan and a turtle ice cream, Lauren had chocolate with sprinkles. We ended up bringing Lauren's home because she is so distracted and eats so slow. Once home she really "dug in" and then headed for a bath.
Lauren's party will be Friday night. There will be family, friends, cake, ice cream, presents and singing. It will be a great day. However, I don't think anything we do will compare to this simple day together.
Thank you God for my wife, my son and my daughter. You have blessed me so much more than I deserve, I am a very blessed man. Amen!
Enjoy the pics of Red Robyn (above), UDF and of course the chocolate face birthday girl!
