Best Birthday Ever

This past Saturday will live in our family's memories forever. Ever since last autumn when Audrey hiked the difficult Y mountain trail on her own two feet to help BYU students light the Y for homecoming, and saw the mascot Cosmo and asked me about him, when I explained about school mascots and told her that most cougars are scary but Cosmo is our friend, she has literally mentioned Cosmo almost every day as though they are BFFs. She'll see a picture of a real cougar and say, "I have a friend who's a cougar! He's Cosmo!" The truth is though, she had only seen him from a distance that September night, at the start of the hike, had asked me if we could go hug him and I said we could after the hike, except we didn't make it down the mountain quite in time to see him. I felt awful but reassured her we'd see him again. She agreed, "because he's my friend." And it stuck. She's mentioned him so many times that I got the idea to try to find out if there was an event I could bring her to to hug him and make up for the hike day, in honor of her birthday. I wrote to Cosmo, explained her love for him and a tiny bit about her history but said I didn't want to ask for special treatment, that I just wanted to bring her somewhere to an event where she could hug him, as a special surprise. But he did me one better. Much, much better. He said, well if she's having a birthday party, could I just stop by? Except he didn't just stop by. He drove up in his Cosmobile, shocking the socks off the kids, did a backflip, and played tag with eleven wily toddlers for more than 30 minutes. I'm in awe of his energy and kindness. He gave her a stuffed animal of himself, and she hugged it with all her might and said, "Now I can see Cosmo whenever I want to!" Just wow. Look at the joy on her face. My heart is full.

My beautiful mother and amazing dad visited from Oregon for a week, and the only photos I have are of them working, which is the real truth because they pretty much never stood still. Mom spent the first half of her Mother's Day weekend making the most beautiful Little Mermaid cake you've ever seen for Audrey. My Dad spent hours upon hours making our yard glow. Then at the crack of dawn on Sunday they hopped on an airplane to spend the rest of the weekend celebrating with the family in Oregon. This is so like them. Modest, generous, focused, and incredibly hard-working, all for love. I hope it doesn't sound like bragging, but man, they really deserve to be bragged about. Thank you, Mom and Dad.