30 years

Jon turned 30 years old on January 8th. I wanted to do something really special for him because he has a had a pretty rough year. I would say 2010 was our biggest challenge yet. Jon went through some really hard times. I think a lot of people know that he suffers from depression but this last year was by far the worst he had ever experienced, therefore making it terribly hard on all of us. I won't go into too many details but when Jon gets really sad he works on his projects and hobbies and he changes his mind a lot. Over the last year he sold his Ford truck and bought a Chevy, and he went to Wyoming to buy a Baja truck, he bought and sold several bikes, selling his down hill rocky mtn switch, buying a single speed bike and a new on one mtn bike, he worked on his blazer a lot and then sold the engine out of it, planning to put the bigger engine from the baja truck in it. Too many changes, medication and doctor changes, shift changes, too many stressful decisions, bad decisions and so on. We are chalking this up to a sort of mid life crisis, but hopefully more like a 1/3 life crisis. Needless to say we got through it and he is doing better.

For his birthday I wanted to do something to really make him feel good. So I decided to have 30 people write Jon a great memory they had with him. I got a huge response. I think there are 46 entries in the book. I got a hold of old coworkers, friends from grade school, cousins, missionary companions, it was amazing. All of the stories were so wonderful, I laughed a lot and cried a lot as I put this book together for him. I was so excited to give it to him that bright and early on his birthday I brought it up to bed for him to see. He read through it, laughed, cried, and he absolutely loved it. I truly think it helped him see how great he is and what a great first 30 years he has had. Here's to many wonderful years and memories to make ahead.