Celebrating Life!

Today is the day we celebrate my wonderful, thoughtful, supportive husband's birthday!!! Today our family will celebrate that he's 37 years young!!! I love, love, love celebrating my husband's birthday for so many reasons! First off he's an awesome husband, father, friend and around all great guy! He's loyal, humble, compassionate, hard working, a lover of God! What is there not for our family to celebrate?!! I will admit that at times I'm overly excited to celebrate Soowan's birthday, because of the lack of birthdays that were not celebrated in the past.

See, we really don't know when Soowan's 'actual' birthday is (but find comfort that our heavenly Father does!), because he was found abandoned in a field somewhere in South Korea as an infant. His adoption paperwork states that he was found by the property owner and he took Soowan to the proper authorities in Seoul, South Korea. There he was given a guesstimated age / birth date upon intake. Soowan spent 3 years in an orphanage in Seoul and was labeled 'failure to thrive' by the Korean social services.

At the age of 3 1/2 Soowan was adopted by an American family. Upon his arrival to the United States, my husband weighed 19 pounds (at 3 years old mind you!), had a double ear infection, blew one eardrum on the flight over and his parents were told by the escort that he screamed and cried the entire 12 hour journey from South Korea to LAX. Mmm... possibly the double ear infection, a blown eardrum, along with having no idea what an airplane was and where the heck he was going might have had something to with it!!

Soowan's parents did not celebrate / acknowledge birthdays because of their personal beliefs, therefor he did not learn his actual birthday until he was in Junior High School when he had to provide proof of age to participate in athletics. Even after learning when his birthday was, Soowan didn't acknowledge / celebrate his birthday because it was something he knew nothing about or had ever practiced within his household. He attended birthday parties of his friends when growing up, but thought that theirs were 'worth' celebrating.

Then Soowan met and fell in love with me! he he! I was in complete shock when I found out he had never had a birthday party, or a birthday cake. No one had ever sang the 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' song to him. He had never blown out candles or ever been given a birthday gift! On a side note, I came from a family who had outrageous, over the top, full of friends and family birthday parties and I COULD NOT COMPREHEND THAT HE NEVER HAD ANY OF THE ABOVE!!! Not even a smidgin!

Because of my great love for Soowan and of celebrating birthdays, along with LOTS help from Soowan's roommates at the time, we put together a BIG SURPRISE birthday party for Soowan!!! He was completely surprised and humbled that we would do such a thing! Truly he had no idea what to do with himself and how to accept all the blessings and well wishes thrown at him that night. That evening Soowan was given his first birthday party, had a birthday cake with his name on it, had the 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' song sung to him, blew out his first set of birthday candles and opened his first birthday gifts on his 24th birthday!

To this day Soowan is very humble about his birthday. He truly expects nothing on his birthday, but graciously accepts what myself and the kids do for him. I don't make it a huge spectacle like I did for his 'first' birthday party, but we try and make it special for him, because he's very special to us.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE!!! We love you with all our heart!