Today is Emery‘s 9th Birthday, so – Happy Birthday, Spud!

I’m going to take this time to brag on Emery a little bit. I can do that, because I’m his Mom.

Emery is one of the “lovingest” (I know that’s not a real word) kids I know. He delights in taking care of his little sisters, and they adore him.

Emery is also very creative. He is showing a lot of artistic talent, especially when it comes to drawing.

But Emery’s biggest love is flowers. He’s adored them since he was little. Our neighbors have wonderful flower gardens, and Emery is forever begging cut flowers from them.

This past February, Jim took the oldest three children to sell soap at the Dayton Home and Garden Show. Emery took a break and was gone for almost two hours. When he returned, he was grinning from ear to ear.

This is how the story was told to me – apparently they had some sort of class where they showed people how to arrange cut flowers. At the end of the class they announced, “Tomorrow we’re going to pick some people from the audience to come up here and arrange flowers in front of everybody.”

There was lots of audible groaning amongst the listeners until a very loud, “YEEEESSSSSSSS!” was heard ringing through the crowd.

With that, the guy in charge decided to bring Emery up on the stage right then and there and had him do his own flower arrangement. Needless to say, Emery was thrilled.

He came home from that trip with lots of supplies and even bulbs to plant in his flower garden (oh yeah, we gave Emery his own flower garden last year).

Last month, Emery was selling soap at a different show. One of the ladies near our booth had a booth selling floral monument arrangements.

Once again, Emery took a very long break. Only this time he was doing this:

Yep, Emery made that all by himself. I was told that the lady helped him determine the pattern, but he did it.

But do you want to know the best part? Apparently while he was in the middle of making it, a customer approached the booth and bought another arrangement and that one – yep, the very one Emery was making. And the very kind monument flower lady (I wish I knew her name) gave Emery half the money! How sweet was that?

Needless to say, Emery was thrilled.

It is so awesome to watch him using and developing his talents.

I can’t wait to see what Emery’s tenth year brings!