Olivia, I can not believe your turning 23 today, or this whole world just seems to spin faster every year. It seems like just yesterday, I had to hold you in my arms. So you could blow out your birthday candles today. I just hoped for a hug and a piece of cake. When you were a little girl, I would tiptoe in your room that night and look down at you, smiling and your sleep that you were so pretty. You would melt my heart, what you were growing so fast that when I tucked you in at night, I never knew how old you would be. When you awoke one evening, you would crawl on dad's lap and throw your arms around my neck and beg me to carry you. Lock in the airplane to bed that in the next morning you were to grown up for that sort of thing.
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00:00:49
You so quickly approach that awkward age, where you were still too young to drive the car yet to old, to be carried in the house asleep on daddy's shoulder. Olly, you have such a bright and wonderful future in front of you. And as you turn another year older today and continue to find your way as a young lady in this world. I want to tell you a secret that you taught me to see your always going to find it hard to be content today when you are so eager for tomorrow, but always take the time to slow down, look around you and be grateful for the moment that you're in, because it was hard as it is the belief. Sometimes I promise you at some point, you're going to turn around in wish you had that moment back, Ali, your on a very exciting journey, your traveling all the way from yesterday to tomorrow, it's a rapid trip and you travel light leaving behind your basketball shoes for Eccles bumps, bubble gum and me.
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00:01:44
No, no. I tried not to feel to hurt. When you discovered the world is more important than your daddy's lap yesterday, you were a gym shorts and ponytail, the neighborhood's best basketball player today, your a beautiful young woman. Then you brighten so many people's lives with your smile yesterday. You could mend a doll's broken leg with a hug today that you're able to break a young man's heart with a kiss yesterday, you could get lost one hour away from me and the supermarket. Now I have to worry about losing you down another. I'd have some young man. You see Ali just at the point where you were a growing pain stop. Mine began yesterday. You could be kind of a pain in the neck when you were around, but today your an eighth in my heart, when your not, this is the way God designed the chapters of our life's journey.
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00:02:32
You've traded in your basketball and Barbie Jeep for adulthood in a career in that little boy that you used to push you on the basketball court. Well, he would fight to get a dance with you. Now, the clock on the wall is counting the minutes for you. The sky upstairs, the saving its brightest stars and the sun is waiting with the Chinese days. Oh, I knew I couldn't expect you to live in a dollhouse forever. So sooner or later, the butterflies sheds its cocoon in the smallest bird must try its wings. You may have grown up and out of my arms, but I still recall how you used to scatter Dustin dolls impartially through every room in the house, but you spread it. A lot of sunshine to Ollie.
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00:03:13
The dust has settled or your mom picked up the dolls, but the sunshine will always fill every corner of our hearts. So here I am talking into the microphone because well, if you saw this look on my face, you'd laugh in. If I spoke with this lump in my throat,
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00:03:31
I cry.
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00:03:33
Yeah, honey. When I looked at you as a child, you were asleep and beauty. So I would tip toe over and kiss you. You never woke up. I knew you wouldn't. According to the legend, only the handsome young prince can open your eyes. And I'm just the father of the future bride. Today. You wake as a young lady and you didn't even realize that you changed courses in the middle of the dream. You might notice the little change in me. I I'm sure. I looked a little different somehow, a little older, little less hair, a little sadder, but I'm a whole lot richer because not too many years ago, I kissed a princess that has grown into an incredible young lady. And I feel like a king.
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00:04:14
So as you celebrate the milestone of being another year older, I celebrate the blessing of being your dad. Happy birthday, Olivia