Welcome to the 4th Decade, Jennifer

Today is Jennifer's birthday. That's big stuff 'round these parts. Most families celebrate Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Canada Day, etc. At the McGregor household, the pinnacle of our year is the day on which Jenny officially gets older. And this year she's 30.

Thirty is quite a lot of years (I should know, I've been there). It's about that age where you use candles to represent decades, because if you used the appropriate amount of candles it would be a fire hazard. Over the past 3 decades, Jenny has accomplished some remarkable feats. Here are a few:

1. On May 11, 1981, Jenny came into this world screaming . . . literally. Her parents report that Jenny was so gassy that from sundown to sun up she vocalized her displeasure with severity. Her parents became so desperate that they would lay her in her crib and leave the apartment on short walks just to get away from the fury. It wasn't until the doctor clued them in on those magical gas drops that Jenny finally quieted down (at one end, at least).

2. Interestingly, Jenny was also born with only one hip due to her mother's ingestion of a pregnancy drug that is now outlawed--for obvious reasons. The other hip eventually grew in.

3. Jenny was born in Utah, moved to Idaho, and then to Arizona by the time she was 5. From ages 5 to 10, she attended a new elementary school each year. It wasn't until she moved to Pennsylvania that her parents found a principal willing to reign in Jenny's bullying of other students (mainly wedgies).

4. In Idaho Jennifer had a foster brother (literally, since Jenny's maiden name is in fact Foster). His life was miserable in the house because Jennifer relentlessly ordered him around, and told on him when he wouldn't listen. He was 16; she was 4. Jennifer's father warned me about this before I married her.

5. Speaking of marriage, before I proposed to Jennifer I called her father to ask for permission. He used the opportunity to warn me about her. I'm not kidding. In fact, the story above was first related to me during that conversation as a point to support his thesis.

6. Jenny once ran away from home (seriously). But once she realized her parents weren't coming to look for her, she went back home.

7. Jenny spent her 19th birthday teaching English in China. So accustomed to people not speaking English, she and her compatriots began admiring a young man riding across the aisle from them on the train. After they finished commenting about his attractiveness, he walked up to Jennifer to get her contact information. In perfect English.

8. By her 20th birthday, she met the man of her dreams. Then she married me instead.

As most of you reading this blog already know, Jenny is a fantastic woman. I'm so very lucky to have met her, drugged her, and then married her. She is an excellent mother, a patient wife, and a faithful friend.

Waxing philosophical for a bit, I'm one of those who doubts the existence of "the one"--that singular person God created as a match for us. Rather, marital decisions are ones of free agency and sound judgment (with the Spirit certainly playing its proper role). So I'm daily so astonished that I ended up with Jenny. I'm congenitally a very poor decision-maker, but at the time in my life I met and dated Jennifer, my stupidity knew few bounds. How I was ever able to see clearly enough that Jennifer would someday be a perfect wife befuddles me, and pure luck was surely the primary guide. Equally, how Jennifer, the paragon of wisdom, failed so utterly in choosing her eternal mate during this period also confuses me. Needless to say, I'm happy for her lapse in judgment, and I'm daily thrilled that I made the most logical decision in my entire life: to marry Jennifer Lynn Foster McGregor.

Happy Birthday, my dear. You've earned another.