Can you hear me smiling?

Call me a virgin blogger. I've never done this before, my fingers hesitate as I decide to bare all. The thoughts, emotions, silly-ramblings-on of my simple life. I decided today that I need to blog. I need to share and I don't know why. I'm a first time mom of a now 4 month old son (decidedly the most amazing baby to have been born thus far) a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a graphic designer, and well you get the idea.

I lost my father almost 5 years ago. It happened in an instant. He called me at 5pm out of the blue like always, "just calling to say hi, and tell you I love you Acey-cakes (one of many nicknames)." At 7pm he was dead. Brain anurysm? Massive heart attack? We'll never know. My world was so turned upside down. I had just met the man who would become my husband, and in the same month lost the man that for my entire 26 years had meant the world to me. How could it be that these two men who I had and would come to share so much of life with never meet?

It's been 5 years and the emotions are still so raw. When does it fade? When my nephews were born I had a whole new realization that my parents were once regular people with dreams and lives before my brother and I entered with the hostile take-over. I appreciated them so much when I watched as we all fawned over my nephew as if he were the king of kings, realizing that they once fawned over me and Tom in the same teary-eyed joyful way. And now here I am gleefully saddled with my own child and the feelings are even deeper than I imagined. I want Luke to know that I love him with wild abandon, that his dreams are my dreams, that life is an adventure and you need to go live it to figure it out. Support, trust, freedom, rules, respect, integrity and passion are the words that my father instilled in me. I feel honored to have been raised in that way and honored to pass the morals on.

Dad, can you hear me smiling? Life is sweet, you are ever-present and I am so thankful that you were mine.