“Life gives us brief moments with another…but sometimes in those brief moments we get memories that last a lifetime.”

2010 was chock full of those type of moments.

Brief  little pockets of time that swept down, wrapped us all in their warm grasp, and then left us changed for a lifetime.

We celebrated with MJ’s mom as she turned 90 years old. 

We hosted a Mystery Dinner Party and laughed until the tears rolled.

We spent lots of time doing fun things with the little people that make our life so GRAND!

We celebrated the major milestones…

and the tiny sliver of moments that took our breath away.

We welcomed new family members with joy, and we said good-bye to others who left  footprints on the pathways of our hearts.

We enjoyed time with friends, drinking in all the joys that come with these type of friendships.

We cruised the deep, blue sea…

and enjoyed road trips with our nearest and dearest.

We had epic sleep-overs, complete with McDonalds, popcorn, and movies, with all the littles in our life.

We took in Game 5 of the World Series…and had so much fun that we didn’t even mourn when the Rangers lost that night.

Most of all, we lived a year full of loving this family. The family that God has so mightily blessed us with.

2010 was an amazing year, filled to the brim with amazing people, amazing events, and amazing moments.

Moments that have left us forever changed. And forever grateful that lived them.

Mike: “You know what I’m going to have tonight?”

Me: “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have a hot dog.”

Mike: “Me too. Isn’t it funny how we never eat hot dogs except when we’re at a baseball game?”

Me: “That’s because they really do taste good at games.”

Mike: “I’m going to have mustard on mine.”

Me: “Oooo, and relish.”

Mike: “Don’t forget the cheese.”

Me: “Definitely going to have cheese.”

Mike: “And onions…”

Me: “Blech. Don’t think so, mister. No onions.”

Mike: “You know…they say that if you have a little onion too, you’ll never even notice the onion on my breath…”

Me: “I hear that’s what ‘they’ say.”

Mike: “So you’ll eat onion?”

Me: “We’ll see…” (Translated: not in THIS lifetime!)

(Twenty minutes later, as we’re walking into the ballpark.)

Mike (pointing in the opposite direction of the hot dog place) : “Let’s go have barbeque at Sonny Bryan’s.”

Me (shrugging): “Sure. Okay.”

Denise and I were on the phone, finalizing our plans for the next night’s game. Mike and I had invited the three of them to be our guests.

“Uh…not.” I laughed. “If the girl (our nickname for ‘our girl’) doesn’t come, then the deal is OFF.”

She laughed too. “That’s what we figured.”

Now, obviously we would have still welcomed them even if they had felt the need for a night out without the baby but – Uncle Mike and Aunt Staci certainly loved seeing her reaction to her very first baseball game!

She also strolled away from the game with a brand new pink Roughrider’s cap and a matching tot-size pink bat! From start to finish, she was totally into people watching and acted as though she’d been to zillions of games!

(As you can tell, we need to convert her mommy to the Rangers/Roughriders part of the league!)