hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

My mom loves coffee ice cream. She never, ever falls asleep watching movies. She has beautiful, perfect cursive handwriting. When she gets upset she says “Jiminy Christmas.” She always does a crossword puzzle while she watches the 10:00 news, and then promptly goes to bed at 10:30.

Mom is a great cook. She makes perfect brownies. She’s so amazing at giving driving directions, she can tell you how to get anywhere in Dallas or Houston and what stores are on every corner. It’s like a superpower. My mom is good: she always eats the right things (her idea of a “treat” is a “fizzy water”), she turns her library books in on time, she keeps a perfect check record, and she even flosses every night.

She is ridiculously patient with us. Mom is a great sport, and puts up with my dad and siblings and I when we tease her about using her “British voice” (I honestly don’t know how she hasn’t killed us yet). It’s impossible to call her at an inconvenient time; she is always ready to talk. And if we call and don’t really say anything, she’s okay with long silences. When I lived at home for a while in December, she played Speed Scrabble and Rummikube with me every night, and it was during these contented times that I was able to confide how I was feeling about where God was leading me.

My mom is an excellent preschool teacher; she even plays classical music for the kids in her class. She is crazy smart- she pretty much always finishes every crossword puzzle in the paper, and is crazy well-read. She is always reading multiple books at once, not to mention listening to books in the car and while she does the ironing.

My mom is seriously very fun. On the last night Ginger was in Texas last week, the three of us got out her wedding dress for the first time in 29 years, and Ginger and I both tried on her lovely veil as Mom regaled us with wedding day stories. Then she got out bags of old letters that she had written to her parents while at Texas Tech and we all laughed at the stories of our collegiate mother until we couldn’t breathe .

Mom is the perfect example of what a godly wife should be, and I know Ginger and I will be lucky if we are able to exemplify even a smidgeon of the qualities that she has brought to her marriage. First and foremost my mom is an amazing Christian woman, and I have learned what walking with the Lord looks like firsthand. We don’t deserve her love, her patience, her wisdom, her humor, or anything of the other many things she is constantly blessing us with. I don’t know how we got so lucky.

Happy Birthday to the MOST AMAZINGEST MOM in the history of ever. I love you!