Dear Baby,

Dear Baby,

Your Daddy is FUNNY!  He makes me laugh every single day.  He helps me laugh when no one and nothing else can.  He's just witty and funny.  But my favorite thing about his humor is that it always uplifts.  We so desperately need that in the world today.  We have enough cynicism, sarcasm and degradation.  But your daddy never takes part in those.  He loves to tease, but it is never at the expense of another.  He loves to laugh, but it is always in such a way that leads to more joy, happiness and light.

Your Daddy is always doing things that catch me off guard that I find to be so cute and funny.  Today in our Doctrine and Covenants class we were talking about a man from Church History named W. W. Phelps.  He owned a printing press that helped the Church publish many things.  He also wrote many of the hymns and helped to compile all the songs for the Hymn Book.  At one point during the class I glanced over at your Daddy's notes and he had written, "Dubya Dubya Phelps".  For some reason it made me laugh really hard.  I couldn't stop smiling the rest of the class period.  Our teacher also always asks these obnoxious rhetorical questions in the middle of people commenting.  They usually are in response to someone's comment.  Well today our teacher had just asked yet another rhetorical question in response to someone's comment stating, " Can you think of a greater commandment than trusting in the Lord with your whole heart?"  He then called on your Daddy to make his comment.  Instead of just making his comment like everyone else in the class does, your Daddy first says, "This is not an answer to question because I can't think of a better thing to do than trust in the Lord but my comment was..."  It made the whole class laugh and your Daddy didn't even skip a beat and just kept right on speaking.  You could tell it kind of caught our teacher off guard but he just laughed and smiled for the next few minutes.  These are just simple examples but they show pieces of your Daddy that I love so much.

Baby, I hope that you can develop a sense of humor like your Daddy's.  It does the heart good.  Laughter can be such a force for good and light in this world of increasing darkness.  We need more people who can laugh with light and goodness and bring smiles to the faces of others.  Every time I look at your Daddy I am reminded of a quote by President James E. Faust (I think it fitting that he has the same name as Daddy).

"We can let the light within us show in many different ways.  It may be as simple as a smile... let the sunshine that is in your heart show in your face."

Daddy does that every day through laughter and helping other laugh and see the good in the world.  And I love him for it.  I'm excited for you to know his joy and laughter your whole life and learn it from him :)