As you may know, our family has a tradition of asking for small charitable donations in lieu of birthday gifts for each of our children.

We do this for several reasons. For starters, my children do not need a thing. This is especially true when you consider how much children around the world go without--such as food, water, medicine, and other necessities we often take for granted.

Another reason we started this tradition is because we feel it gives our children so much more than they would ever get out of a giant pile of presents. I think this will be especially true as our children get older and understand our family tradition even more.

This year we have selected "Charity:Water" as the charity we'd like to help support in honor of Elizabeth's (water themed) 3rd birthday!

As you may know, a billion people in the world are living without clean water. The clean-water crisis is truly tragic, especially when you consider how cheap it is to drill wells for clean water, and how easy it would be to eradicate this problem. Not only do millions of people contract deadly diseases from contaminated water, but 45,000 people will die this week alone. Countless millions (some who are sick, some who will get sick) walk hours each day to get dirty water to give to their families. And having to trek for hours to get water each day, makes it almost impossible for children to go to school, women to help with the family business, and thereby creates a vicious cycle of poverty and disease.

Elizabeth's birthday wish this year is not for more gifts that she doesn't need, but to give clean and safe drinking water to some of the billion living without it.

Consider a donation to this important cause. Our goal is to raise $100--helping 5 people (an entire family) to have access to clean drinking water for 20 years!

Please note: Because of "Charity: Water's" unique model, 100% of all donations go directly to water projects costs, and each donation is "proved" and tracked to the village it helped using GPS coordinates, google earth satellite tracking, photos, and video.