Happy Birthday, Avril

This last Thursday (April 9) was Avril's 24th birthday. We had quite the little party. Avril's parents and her sister came, and my parents and my cousin Beth (they were passing through on their way to Arizona) stopped in, too. We had lasagna and cheesecake and good company.

Now I'm going to do a little tribute to her, not unlike what Mum does for her kids on their birthdays. It'll be a little different, though, because I'm only going back as far as I've known her.
I met Avril in the summer of 2003. She was 18 years old and fresh out of high school. She went to school in Foremost, Alberta for most of her life, but graduated from Stirling High School. She missed a few months of her senior year due to a bad case of pneumonia, but still finished second in her class. The above picture is one of her grad pictures, and that's pretty much how she looked when I met her, only she wasn't wearing a prom dress and didn't have those pretty flowers in her hair. She was the little sister of two of my friends, Dalin and Afton Laqua (brother and sister, not husband and wife). She doesn't remember meeting me. We didn't make a huge impact on each other at first.
This is the first picture of the two of us together. We weren't dating at the time. In fact, we were both at this dance with different dates. But it was posing for this picture, when I put my arm around her waist, that I first felt a little spark.
Near the end of March, 2004, after sitting next to each other at a play, Avril and I started a month-long stretch of flirting with each other. The above picture was taken at Avril's 19th birthday party. Her parents had given her a vacuum cleaner, and I was helping her put it together. While I was reading the instructions, she figured out how to do it on her own.
We started dating near the end of April, 2004. The above picture was taken during our courtship. Ain't she hot?
We got engaged on May 26, 2004. We were both living in Lethbridge, Alberta at the time. In fact, we were living there since we had met.
We were married on September 17, 2004 in the Alberta Cardston Temple. She was the most beautiful bride in the world. I know all husbands say that (all good husbands, anyway), but it's actually true in my case. We spent the first few months of our marriage in Stirling, Alberta.
This picture is from Avril's 20th birthday (April 9, 2005) in Stirling, her first birthday since we were an official couple. I made that cake, by the way. She's so adorable. This was also near the end of her college career.
Her convocation from Lethbridge Community College was in May of 2005. She graduated with an Office Administration diploma and immediately started working at North & Company law firm in Lethbridge as a legal assistant. Shortly after this, we moved into Lethbridge.
While we were living in Lethbridge, Avril gave birth to our first son, Kenneth, on June 2, 2006. It was a hard, long labour, but she got through it and naturally gave birth to the 9 pound 11 ounce baby with a 38 cm head.
Almost two years later, on March 24, 2008, she did it again. Alexander was an easier birth, in part due to his more reasonable size (7 pounds 15 ounces with a 36 cm head).

Avril is a wonderful wife and mother, and I'm so blessed to have found her. Happy birthday, Avril!
(This is the most recent good picture of Avril I could find. The batteries in our camera were dead on her birthday, and I forgot to have Afton upload the pictures from her camera while she was here. I snuck in some of her past birthday pictures, so that's something.)