Day 11 – Your siblings

this is my brother, phillip andrew.

he's 6'4", or taller, i'm not sure his exact height.  *laugh*  tall.  that's it.  : )  he is 3 1/2 years younger than me, and when he was a baby i accidentally messed up his tooth because i wanted his bottle & he didn't want to share.  sorry, baby brother!!  he also has scars from when i accidentally clawed him while "play/fighting."  i'm happy we got over that stage & became friends!  heh.  






idk when that happened, my parents would joke that it was when he got taller than me!  which is entirely probable.  he's always been a gentleman, and never deliberately hurt me, cuz i'm a girl.  : )  i always tried to be a good big sister.  he was always cooler than me, tho.  which is okay!  


i love him lots, and i'm happy that God blessed me w/ him.  he's an awesome brother and father, and i hope that someday soon he'll let the Lord back into his heart!  he knows Him, he just doesn't always act like it, or something like that.  

tonight i got to hug him, and i gave him a present from our trip to the bass pro shop (personalized shot glass, woot!).  he got home just in time to give leyton a bath, too.  


we were also blessed to have a cousin-brother & sister, and many groups of foster siblings.  


sometimes it was hard to have these "new kids" in our home - when phil was in HS & i was in college & after, so we were already "grown."  and i have to admit that having foster sibs did play a part in my not wanting kids of my own.  having babies and 2 & 3 year old (and older, in some cases) constantly in the house was exhausting!  as much as i loved it, and loved each & every one of those kids, some days i would just go into my room & shut the door because i didn't want to deal w/ them!  you can't (or shouldn't, really) do that w/ your own kids!  altho you can send them off to gramma's or auntie or uncle or the sitters... heh.  


{the plan was to have photos of bret, misha, jorey, amorae, jasmine, elisabeth, johnna, jonathan & ethan here, but my computer doesn't like the folder they are in, and went all lizzie borden on me when i tried to insert pictures.  so... i might try to edit them in on another day, or i'll just randomly pop them into other posts later!}


anyway, blessings!!!  


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and now for today, in which i had fun at the open house - tons of great food, and i ordered about $30 of product.  also, i was texted later to say i won the hostess gift, so woot!!  : )  it was crazy to get there, tho!  the road i needed to take was under construction, so traffic was moving at a snail's pace.  and i was already running about 20 minutes behind!  but it was okay, as usual of course, and everything worked out nicely.


after the open house, i met mom & leyton at the park & we played for 20 minutes or so.  BEAUTIFUL day out, for sure!  

this is the cutest gramma-leyton picture in the history of gramma-leyton pictures thus far, don't ya think?  they had both just climbed up the slide, and were saying "ta-da!"  : )  

leyton got a spongebob & patrick tattoo at the hawkeye's kids' day party thingy.  

next, we went to famous footwear, because mom was appalled that i was still wearing the ratty shoes i had on.  she very generously bought me 2 pairs of dressy shoes & now i just need to get tennies!  she kept going to the trainer-looking tennies, and i prefer the converse or canvas look.  sketchers would be okay, too, some styles.  unfortunately, my little feet are quite wide (i say little because they look little but i wear a larger shoe, possibly because of their width!), and they didn't carry a lot of wide-width shoes.  and apparently converse shoes run narrow.  darn it!!  i tried on a couple pair and they fit great - except they didn't look great at the wide part of my food because they didn't lace up properly.  : (  i was disappointed in that.  so, then mom kept trying to get me to like these ... athletic looking shoes.  i might change my mind later, but for right now, that is just a look that i don't like!  i don't really want my shoes to look like i could break into a jog at any time, or that i just came off the bball court.  just not my style, and i think the shoes that are my style look better w/ skirts anyway.


: ) 


our next stop was going to be dinner, but mo' brady's didn't open til 4, so we went to toys r us to check out some zhu zhu pets.  leyton & i left mom to pick out hamsters while we looked at matchbox cars & of course thomas the train toys!  i debated taking the camera in w/ me, and decided not to.  i regret that decision because not only were there tons of cute leyton moments, but there were some pretty nifty TOYS that i would have liked to have shared!  apparently, medieval play is in?  there were a ton of knights, dragons, villages... i was excited to see it, but also a little peeved that i'd never heard of these toys!!  *laugh*  i also discovered a smurf village and a bunch of awesome lego stuff.  i knew there were lego cameras thanks to this blog, but i had no idea there were also video cameras, boom boxes and clock radios!  

seriously, ppl, i almost bought it!!  (but i have a perfectly working alarm clock and i don't NEED a lego alarm clock, and so it is still safely at home at toys r us.)


finally, after reuniting w/ mom & her hamsters, leyton picked out a matchbox garbage truck & we checked out to go to dinner.  YUMMY!  we had a sweet auntie-leyton moment, too... : ) 

i'm not entirely sure what that expression is... he looks scared but he's the one who was being all huggy, so i promise he wasn't scared!  *laugh*  

then it was back to mom's to play at the park for a few minutes, then play w/ the hamsters (tex and rocky) and play dough and eat a popsicle (him) and a klondike bar (me) while mom napped on the couch.  


i made my way home, to chat w/ joy & find out that my next niece or nephew will be a niece (yay! yay! yay!).  read some blogs and wrote this one and the dinner one and now... now i can think about sleeping!  *laugh*  


ohhhh, before i sleep, tho... i got two wonderful pieces of mail today - a postcrossing from poland and the sweetest card from cousin kathy.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!  *HUGS*  this made my day even more perfect!  : )   

so, take care, and i hope your day was wonderful, too.   ttfn!