Happy Birthday Sam! Leaving your teens behind you.

Living gratefully today, I say Happy Birthday to our son Sam.  Happy 20th! I so appreciate you and what being your mom means to me.

It's 4:52 a.m. as I write this, almost exactly the time you officially entered the world twenty years ago on a Thursday morning at Regina Medical Center. Being pregnant, giving birth, and being your mom every day since is one of my biggest joys and learning experiences. It is also bittersweet every year as you grow more into a young man. Time goes so fast. You are doing so well. 

This is the first time we won't be together on your birthday. You left yesterday to return to your second semester of college after the holiday break. And you have also left your teens behind you. 

This was the post I wrote two years ago, just weeks before your senior year of high school took a decidedly strange and unwelcome turn when the COVID-19 pandemic threw us all for a loop. 

There has been plenty that has come and gone in these two years. College football, COVID quarantine, transfer from a school 200 miles away to one 20 miles away, summer work, campus life, a new girlfriend.

You made your first big purchase this summer, buying your first tractor--a 1959 Farmall 560 you bought with money you have saved. You have tinkered with it and used it for work on your uncle's farm. 

These two pictures from the last year capture a June day in Sioux Falls when we were taking family pictures, and our mother/son Mother's Day photo that I require of you. Your hair has gotten longer since then and mine has gotten shorter.

You have left your teens behind you. You have so much to look forward to in the next year, and we look forward to supporting you and witnessing it.  Have a great second semester. Enjoy your growing relationship with Halle. 

Happy Birthday Sam! I love you with a big piece of my heart.