The Spring of 2000 was an interesting time for me. As a Grad student at LSU I felt as though I was on top of the world. Around mid-April I developed a case of the flu. This caused me to be bed bound for almost a week.
At one point in that week, my wife mentioned something about me needing to meet these two little girls. If memory serves I threw up and went back to sleep. By the end of the week I was feeling better. In pops the wife from work informing me that "tonight was the night". As a young married man there are a couple of ways to interpret such a message.
None of them involved what happened next. Within the hour I was headed to McDonald's to meet the girls I was going to adopt. You cannot image the emotions running through my mind as the 1997 Taurus headed to the rendezvous.
Who was I to be a dad? As a grad student I earned 10,800 bucks a year. And my parenting experience consisted of what I had seen on reruns of Mad About You, and Full House. Surely this was a mistake. While rarely wrong, my wife had barked up the wrong tree before (she did marry me after all).
When I met those two little girls (the middle two above) my heart melted. Massive changes resulted. The two bedroom apartment gave way to a small house, and even at the age of 36 I don't own a boat. Glancing back at those old tax returns, I don't know how we did it. But God provided through those lean years.
After a few years God blessed my wife and I with two more girls. What does this have to do with real estate? People turn houses into homes. When crazy clients act, well crazy, I know my family will be waiting for me at home.
This picture was taken at Destin, Florida this spring. The family had a blast on the Emerald Coast. On the trip back I thought about how fleeting time is. Within ten years, the older two will be in college and starting lives of their own. Within 15 years it will just be the wife and I visiting the beach. She will have to forgive me when I choke up at the sight of a young family taking a picture on "our" bench.
Happy Father's Day
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