jack got a sound room for his birthday

this is me at about 10:00 on the morning of september 26, 2006...

and this is me shortly after 11:27 on that same day...

peaceful, joyful, thankful, and in love.  the lord blessed us richly when jackson edward lewis joined our family four years ago today.

a few members of our family came over for cake and pizza yesterday to celebrate the little guy's birthday.  as you might have read in about 57 other posts, jack would give his big toes to be a real guitarist or drummer.  actually, he would probably give all 10 toes if he could do both at the same time.  well much to his delight, nanny and pop came in toting a red guitar cake that made him feel like he was one step closer to the stage.

but the complete and total freak-out came when he opened their gift.  now before you go all "i-can't-believe-they-did-that" on me, my mom asked permission to buy this...

please tell me you can see his excitement in that first photo.  the boy squealed like a little pig when he saw that he had just been given a drum set.

"elated" just doesn't do it justice.  add to that that grandpam and papaw gave him a ukulele, and it almost sent him over the top.

we didn't want all the fun to be had the day before his real birthday, so our little family saved our gift for today.  we started by hiding grandpam and papaw's other present to him in the mailbox for him to search out and find...

then once he had his snazzy new helmet and pads, we told him that he didn't have to ride the hand-me-down pink bike he'd been using for a while.  SURPRISE!

for all you birmingham folks, you know that it's rained most of the day today.  doesn't matter a bit to our crew...

i have to take a step back to the drum set now and tell you that yes, my mom did ask permission to give jack the loudest toy known to man.  and yes, i did tell her it was perfectly fine.  HOWEVER, at the time of our conversation, the soundproof basement was being used as the playroom.  when josh started working from home, though, we rearranged and made it his office.  are you picking up on the dilemma here?

don't worry about it too much.  i think we figured out a nice solution -- our closest makes a splendid sound room.

that makes me giggle, but something from earlier this afternoon made me belly-laugh.  i won't show the picture, but i will tell you that it involved a relocation of the drum set and jack sitting on the potty.  bahahahaha!!!!!!!!!

we love you, jack lewis.  so very, very much.