Josh is 20? Can that be right?

Saturday was Josh's (aka: Skittles) 20th birthday, we spent the day in Texarkana, went to the movies and out to eat.  It was fun and funny.  


Josh is the reason that Santa and I got married.  When I met Santa my life was a disaster area kind of messed up and on top of losing my two oldest children in a custody battle with my ex-husband I was in a Mexican stand-off fight with my dad.  My dad was totally against divorce, no matter what.  If the Bible says it, well, that's just the way it was.  I struggled for an extra year and a half with someone I should have let go of just because of this fact.


When Santa and I moved in together (cue gasps, I know right?) I was dead set against getting married again.  He wasn't totally against it,  but he had also been married for 10 years to someone who did not respect him and was not about to go down that same road again.  


We had been through hell some bumps in the road, with the custody trial taking place in New York state and we were living in Texas, Santa had quit his job only 2 weeks after he picked the girls and I up from the airport . . . so yeah, we had issues.


Somehow, through all the long drives to New York and all the "not going to work everyday" we got on the subject of having a baby.  Santa had never had a baby of his own, even though he was the father of four adopted children, his first wife had already had a hysterectomy before they even got married.  After four kids I don't blame her, but this left Santa without a chance of having a child of his own.  


Inside of me, I had a sinking feeling on top of the huge gap between my father and I over the whole divorce issue, was I really willing to add an illegitimate child to this situation?  Well, the answer was 'NO!"  I stood up and practically announced that if Santa and I were going to have a baby together we would have to be married first.  His reply was something along the lines of, 'That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."  His argument, at that time, was that of course we were in a committed relationship with each other, and that we didn't need the state to tell us that we loved each other.  


I did not budge.  I was not having a child without being married.  The end.  


In December, Santa proposed to me and I really think if it hadn't been for him really wanting to have a baby we would have never gotten married.  I mean, maybe we would have later on, if we had stayed together, but who knows.  Naturally, I said, YES!  We set the date for July 1, 1989.  (Wow that seems like a long time ago when you just type it out like that.)


We finally ended up with a plan which was to start looking for jobs half way between both our parents houses which was Memphis, TN.  Santa contacted an employment agency and I started praying.  (Mostly, how sorry I was for getting divorced and begging God to forgive me, when all I really wanted at the time was for my Dad to forgive me.)  But I did pray for us to find jobs so that we could get out of Bolivar where-the-heck, Missouri.


It was like dominoes the way things happened.  (Each time I write that about my life, I can truly see the hand of God making things happen.)  We left Missouri, found a place in Memphis to set up our trailer "home" and started planning the wedding.  We were married and 2 weeks later Santa had to got to Germany with the engineering firm that hired him in Memphis, for 10 days.  Lollipop and Tootsie Pop were with us for summer, so I wasn't alone, but it was still hard, right after getting married.  


While Santa was in Germany, I took a pregnancy test and found out he was going to be a father for the first time.  I was so excited, BUT . . .  I did not want to tell him over the phone.  I wanted to see his reaction and BE with him when I told him.  So I lied.  Naturally, Santa didn't realize that a lot of people have to wait months and sometimes even years to conceive their first child.  


However, Mrs. Santa (that's me) apparently was the host for the Red River Valley, the most fertile woman on the face of the earth.  I must have conceived on our wedding night or sometime in the 2 weeks before he left, because that was 9 months from Josh's birthday.  


When Santa called from Germany and asked, you know, "Did you  . . . you know, start?"  


I tried to sound disappointed, and said, "Yeah, but we can try again."  


He agreed and I breathed a sigh of relief that maybe I had pulled it off.  The girls and I made a huge banner with crayons and the computer paper with the little holes in it, continuous form feed paper (hey it WAS a long time ago) that read, "Welcome Home Daddy"


Nine months (well practically nine months) later Josh arrived at Baptist hospital in Memphis, TN and he was, you guessed it, A BOY!  How excited do you think Santa was that he had a child and it was a boy too?  Wow!


Hope your birthday was a lot of fun.  I love you son!



Mrs. Claus