Listen,
To me, my little sister will always be 12 years old. I guess its because that is how old she was when I left on my mission. I don't think that makes any sense, but I guess having spent those 2 years away just froze her at that age in my mind. My parents will always be in their early 40s, I guess for the same reason.
I remember that when I was younger my dad used to lie about his age. I was probably 8 to 12 years old when he would tell people he was 27. He would have actually been in his mid to late 30s I believe. I remember being a little excited about turning 27 because if he lied about being 27 there must be something great about it. I turned 27 in 2005. That is the year that I graduated from pharmacy school and Brady was born... pretty good year I guess.
Anyway, back to the point of this post. Last week, my little sister announced that she is officially engaged and will be getting married this summer. This was pretty shocking news to me. Not that I felt she would never get married, I always knew she would, she's really quite an amazing person. She has been dating her now-fiancee Tim for a few months and he seems to be a good guy who will treat her the way she deserves and all that, it is just hard to believe that my little baby sister, who will forever be 12 in my mind, is getting married...
I went through similar feelings when she got her drivers license, graduated high school, and graduated from college. It just seems impossible that,
1. She is old enough to be doing all these "grown-up things"
2. That I am old enough for her to be old enough to be doing all these "grown-up things."
Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have a very close, special relationship with my sister. An outsider may think that I don't like her, or even despise her cause I give her so much crap all the time. But I do it out of love, this sounds weird I know, but I give her a hard time because I love and care about her so much. If I didn't care, I would just treat her like anyone else and ignore her. You can ask Hana, the more I love a person the more of a jerk I seem to be to them. If I treat you really nice and respectful-like then you can bet that:
1. I don't like you
2. I am uncomfortable around you (see number 1)
3. I am patronizing you (see number 1)
4. I don't know you (see number 2).
I am really excited for Hay and Tim.
I guess that's all I have for now
We hired Hana's step-nephew Andrew to dig down and fix it. He had to dig a big freakin' hole about 4 feet deep and 4 feet wide to get down there and replace the valve and pipes. He worked very quickly and was reasonable in his price... if anyone needs any help with sprinkler repairs, I would recommend him to help. Let me know and I can get you his contact information.
longingly at the clothes, wishing we could dress our new baby in such cute, 0ver-prices outfits. Well, we found out that if you shop "right" at Gymboree, you can actually get a lot of clothes for a pretty good price using their Gymbucks program. I will not go into detail, but it is a promotion where if you spend so much money during a certain time period you get coupons for $25 off a $50 purchase. Anyway, last week was time to redeem our Gymbucks. This means Hana spends the week prior to the big day going through the kids clothes, assessing needs and so forth. She then creates a cart on the website and at exactly Midnight (eastern time) she quickly enters in the coupon codes and a few days later, we get a big box of clothes delivered right to our doorstep.
suprised by his reaction as he started jumping up and down hugging her saying things like, "I am so excited, hurry hurry open it!" and "this is the best day ever thank you, thank you!" She got the scissors and opened the box. Brady reached into the box and pulled out some clothes, tossed them aside, and pulled out more clothes. After emptying the box, he looked up at her with a worried look and asked, "where are all the clones?" He thought she said it was a whole box of clones to add to his Star Wars Collection. She tried to explain that it was a box of clothes, not clones. He was heart broken. The immense joy and excitement of getting a whole box of clones came crashing down with one fatal swoop.
time book reading thing. We normally don't "do" things like this, but the story being read was by Hana's brother's wife Amanda. (I guess saying my sister-in-law would be quicker/appropriate). She was down from Washington (state) and arranged the whole thing. Anyway, shewrote a children's book that was published and released last week. Its titled "I Need My Monster." I just wanted to give a quick congratulations to her on her great story. Brady carries it with him everywhere he goes and begs people to read it to him. Since buying it he has read it (had it read to him) like 10 times. Its a fun story and the illustrations are amazing.
