Dear Samuel,

Happy 8th birthday bud!

Happy Friday the 13th! I believe this is the first time your birthday has been on a Friday. Don’t believe the hype around this though, you’ll find that it is more of a fun thing than a “scary/unlucky” thing.

And since it is a Friday, that would put you in school today at Franklin Elementary in Mrs. Bakers third grade class. After school, you have plans to go to a nerf war at Marcus’s church. That should be fun!

We didn’t do much for traveling this year, but the one trip we did go on was quite memorable. You thoroughly enjoyed being stranded in Minnesota during a blizzard as you got to go the Mall of America a couple times during this period. You rode a bunch of rides with uncle Tyler, but your favorite by far was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Shock.

I still owe you Great Wolf Lodge since you managed to get your sailor scripture down in Patch. Not only that, you were the only boy to memorize it too! Speaking of Patch, it kicked off again and you are off to a solid start to the new sailor scripture. This year it is Psalms 51:1-17, keep working on it!

You’re still into geography and everything theme park related as those are your favorite videos to watch. You have recently grown fond of Shot of the Yeagers or SOTY. You have even gotten them to respond to some of your comments as well.

You lost some more teeth and currently you’re still waiting for your two front teeth to come in. Since you didn’t get them for your birthday, perhaps you’ll get them for Christmas (ha ha).

You did enjoy your swimming pool that Nana and Papi got you last year for your birthday. You were quite tan as you spent a lot of time out there. You also took a bit of interest in helping me some with smoking and grilling. We’ll work on developing that.

Keep up the good work, and don’t be scared to try new things!

We are very proud of you Samwich!

Happy Eighth Birthday Samuel, we all love you very much!

Love Dad, Mom, Chloe

and a bunch of other people too!