Yesterday, Sarah and I celebrated our 9th anniversary.

I picked an amazing dinner spot at Ciao Bella. She picked a slow chick flick (me, two other guys + 100 teenage girls). Together we had one of the most fun, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable anniversaries we’ve ever had.

Our marriage has really strengthened this year. We turned a corner in France that we’ve struggled to get around for years. It’s exciting.

Along with just having fun, we talked about some goals we have for our marriage for year #10.

1. Pray together more (needs to be quantified)
2. Serve more (needs to be quantified)
3. Define our first official budget ever!
4. Take a real vacation, this year and ever year (I’m praying for a miracle that we’ll spend our 10th anniversary in Italy or at least on a beach)
5. Get a nice espresso machine to change my starbucks habit from buying drinks to buying beans. 

I can’t help it. They absolutely think I’m the next best thing to mom!

This is my new “nephew” Koen Nikhil Mehta. He thinks I’m so cool. And I think the same thing about him.

It was an honor full of joy and sadness to celebrate and say goodbye to Taylor Stephen Ward tonight.

Taylor was a young man with abounding compassion and love, complex struggles and demons, and effervescent virtue and grace.

The line of visitation went out the sanctuary doors, the lobby doors, and spilled onto the streets. The front parking lot, the back parking lot and the side streets were lined with cars. The church pews, the balcony and the overflow seats in the lobby were full at Brookdale Covenant Church.

For a young man who struggled to know that he was loved, but had un-ending compassion for others, his story is made complete in the lives he touched and the stories he left implanted in the hearts of others.

There were hundreds of people there trying to find a way to make goodbye make sense. And yet, in the tragedy of the moment it all made sense. It makes sense sometimes why the hardest thing you could ever want to hear, has to be heard, has to be felt deep in your gut and your heart. The loss of Taylor to so many people who didn’t know Jesus before tonight, went home believing that they shared a Journey with you, and it led you back to the one who loves you infinitely.

As pastor Steve said, you are finally free. Normal, never, but free forever.

Countless people had their story changed because of you.

Taken this weekend at the park with Elliot, Levi, Mommy, Daddy, Erin and Ezra. What a great park, right on the edge of north Minneapolis. Also, a few shots from Daddy’s day with Elliot and Levi at LegoLand at Mall of America…
The extended gallery…

I took some ridiculously cute pictures of Levi at the cabin yesterday. Some below, and a few more here.

We had Elliot’s Birthday Party today.

A month ago, when I asked him what kind of birthday party he wanted, he responeded,

“A Cowboy Johnny Cash party.”

Well that’s what he got…complete with a shirt bought at the cowboy/western store at mall of america. It was awesome.

Check out the pics…