Happy Birthday Ryan!!

To my favorite Ryan! We are so lucky to have you!! You are really good to us. We had a good, mellow birthday day with you today. It was nice to have you home all day and in a good mood. You said that you just wanted the weekend off from work and that's what you are getting. A laid back, go with the flow, nice kind of day with nothing much to do tomorrow.

I know that you aren't the biggest birthday fan. You don't require much hoopla but I still think that you had fun today. I think you look good in your spankin' new shirt and hope you enjoy homemade card and new cologne. It's not much and you think it's too much, but you my dear, are worth it.

I love watching you and the kids interact. You are so good to them. Calm and forgiving. Silly and playful with lots of tricks thrown in the mix. I was watching you walk out of the store tonight with the kids hand in hand with you. You were getting Mia to say some sort of trick and Jake was laughing along with you. I am glad that they make you happy! You can almost always get Sammy to smile at you. It makes me smile when you call him Fat Sam and laugh at him rolling around the floor. He's your funny fat baby.

As always, thanks for being a good daddy and husband. Thanks for taking care of us, playing with us and loving us!

We love you!

Linc and the kiddos

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Last night, we celebrated Ryan's birthday with his parents. We get to go out to dinner with Ry's folks for our birthdays and more often than not, we head out to Lee's Mongolian Barbecue. It's all you can eat good food, good conversation and good laughs. They definitely spoiled him this year. He got a nice shooting bag, gift certificate for dinner at Red Lobster, gift card for the movies with a free babysitter (yeah!) and best of all a Henry lever action 22 rifle from his brother. He was very excited to get the rifle. A while back on the annual father-sons outing to Ephraim, Ryan got to use Matt's new rifle. Ryan had never shot that one before and he really enjoyed it! He out shot his brother and his dad with it! Lucky him that Matt is so extremely generous! Ryan is really excited about it. He gave us all a demonstration and let Jake hold it for a minute. Very exciting!

Of course Sharon made Ry's favorite dessert - Raspberry Razzle Dazzle. It's a brown sugar, coconut, rice crispies and vanilla ice cream concoction with fresh raspberries and raspberry junket. His long standing favorite dessert. He thinks he's had it every year for at least 20 years! Afterwards, more fireworks. We do a lot of fireworks in July since birthdays fall close to the holidays. It's nice sitting at the end of the driveway enjoying the kids enjoying the fireworks. Sam actually fell asleep in the middle of the noise! That kid can sleep through anything!

Thanks Ryan for some fun times! We love you and really like you too!