12: Things About Jim

1. He is an excellent disc golf player. He'll never tell you that.

2. He's extremely smart. No, really, I mean extremely. He won't say that either.

3. He's very humble.

4. He loves to grow things in the dirt.

5. Before he married me, he could count the times in his entire life that he was angry on one hand.

6. He's very even-tempered.

7. He embodies What You See is What You Get entirely. He is always 100% Jim, never a shade of anything else.

8. When he was picking out my engagement ring, he stood at the counter deciding between the one I have and one that was larger, for a really long time. The salesperson persisted that he couldn't go wrong with the larger one, but he chose more modestly. The reason? He said if we were ever missionaries one day, he wouldn't want my ring to be a hindrance to my witness, especially to people who had far less than us. I love that he thought of that. That is the kind of guy I wanted to marry!

9. He is a voracious reader. Apparently, they come in pairs.

10. He's incredibly strong. Sometimes he shocks me with how strong he is. And last month he took a strength test at a physical required for his new job, and he came out with the score of "exceedingly strong"- the highest he could get. He impressed everyone.

11. He saved his first kiss for me, on our wedding day.

12. He is my best friend with all kinds of other benefits and is by far the most popular person in our house- none of us can get enough of him.

Oh, and today is his birthday. Happy Birthday Jim, we love you so much. Every year with you just gets richer.

12: Reasons It's Great to Grow Up in a Big Family

1. You have to learn to respect other people and their property. Because other people and their property are everywhere you look.

2. You always have at least one buddy to hang out with.

3. You see your own strengths and weaknesses very clearly when you grow up around so many different people. And these strengths and weaknesses balance one another out and you in turn become a much more balanced person.

4. You learn to share.

5. You are very aware of the fact that there are other people in the world besides you.

6. You can't always get what you want, but you learn to work it out so it's best for the whole group.

7. You learn how to work well with, love, and have fun with a vastly diverse group of people. Sounds like wonderful training for the world to me.

8. You learn to work well even with almost constant interruptions.

9. It's impossible for your parents to take care of your every need and desire immediately. You have to learn independence and personal responsibility.

10. You learn selflessness.

11. Unless your dad is an astronaut, you'll probably have to get a job as soon as you can in order to have a lot of spending money, and you'll also need to learn how to save and invest some of that money if you want to go to college without racking up debt.

12. You learn to avoid wasting things.

12: Things I Don't Enjoy

1. Tomatoes.

2. My Arch Nemesis, the Laundry.

3. Being Tickled.

4. Small Talk. I'm just not good at it.

5. Worse: Mom Talk. (As in, endless, mindless chatter that isn't actually specifically helpful or supportive, or interesting to the conversation, about what kid did what at what age, 20 minute long birth stories wherein nothing out of the ordinary happened, and general gratuitous stories about typical children-related things that seem to have no purpose being said, other than that some mothers just forget that they can talk about other things besides their kids upon giving birth.) Does this bother anyone else?

6. People That Don't Get Stuff Done When They Know Someone Else is Waiting or Depending on Them.

7. Science Fiction. Even Narnia is a stretch for me.

8. My Arch Nemesis' Side Kick, The Dishes.

9. Gardening. I Avoid It Completely.

10. Listening to People Speak in Another Language Besides English in Public. I'm always sure they're talking about me.

11. Laundry. Yes, it deserves two spots.

12. Inconsideration. I'm sure it's a word.