Where Have I Been?

If you've been keeping up with my new blog, you know that I've kinda gone AWOL. Keep reading to find out why.

One thing you should know about me is how important family is. Nothing means more to me than spending time with my family, being at the hospital when nieces and nephews are born, watching them grow, hanging out with the sibs, chillin' with my momma and pops...family is just such a blessing.

Let me just give you a bit of background. I'm the youngest of 4 kids. I live with my momma and pops because I have student loans and car loans...the same old story of most of my generation that went to college.

This is my momma and pops, and pops' bike. 

Yes, my parents are super rad.

The oldest sibling is my brother, Joe. Joe is pretty quiet. He is also 10 years older than me. He was going to college when I was 8. So you can imagine we've never really had a ton in common. A lot of my memories in high school of bonding time with Joe involved watching movies together. Which I know sounds cheesy and not very bonding-like, but for us, it worked. And when those movies were the extended editions of the LOTR trilogy, (Lord of the Rings for any of you who aren't fans, but should be), that's like 4 hours of together time. Now that I've entered adulthood, Joe and I have found a lot more in common, like being in the worship band at church together, shooting guns (yes. I did just say the "g" word. Don't like it? Don't read my blog.) and spending time with the nieces and nephews. He is married to a beautiful woman, Tawny. Tawny has 2 boys, Jordan and Kody who are great boys. I love having them be a part of our family. Here are her handsome boys all dressed up (for Easter, I think):

The next oldest is my sister, Debs. I'm closest to her out of all my siblings, we look the most alike, have the most similar outlooks on life, etc. A lot of my fond memories of growing up involve her. This girl can be just as crazy (if not more so) than me.  In high school, every time I went away for a week, I came home to some surprise from Deb. One time she made all kinds of signs that said various random things, or had pictures of llamas, or drawings of my head...Another time she used about 12 spools of ribbon and made a crazy pattern all through my room that I literally could not get in my door without doing some sort of 007 move. Not too many days go by that we aren't either emailing or texting or hanging out at my parents house. Deb is married to a super awesome guy, Roger, and they have 2 adorable kids, Violet  and Malakai (or Kai, or mallow cup).

Debs, Me, and Violet at Kai's birthday party!

This is the Kai Man. Or "Big M" as I call him. 

In order to keep this post from being an entire  book, I'll be posting random things about the kids and family as we continue on this journey into blog-land. So bear with me...we're almost done!

The next youngest sibling is my sister Beth. One of my favorites things about growing up with Beth was always having someone there. When I had to make the scary transition from an elementary school of about 200 to a junior high of over a thousand, Beth was there to help me be less scared. One of the things we love to do together is sing. We grew up singing together from toddlers, and we still sing together when she's home. Beth is married to a youth pastor named Justin. He's a weird dude (Deb and I pick on him like it's our job...but he dishes it right back.) Let me just tell you about Justin. When Beth met him and talked to my parents about dating him, Debs and I (we're the schemers of the family) came up with a questionaire of about 62ish pages for him to fill out. Some of the questions were like basic getting-to-know-you questions. The vast majority, however, were entirely nonsensical. (i.e. how do you feel about a girl who wears orange pants? You leg was just bitten by a deranged beaver - what do you do? What's your favorite color of llama?) Justin filled out the entire thing and sent it back! They also have 2 kids that are wonderful Emma and Craig

This is Emma and Me!

And here's Craiggers!

So there you have it. When we're all together we have 9 adults and 6 kids! At this point you're probably thinking...cool. Now I know all about your family, but I thought this post was about where you've been...

Well that's just it. I was with my family. We were almost all together, which is very rare these days, and so I took some vacation days from work, got up about 6:30 every morning and spent all day every day with my family.

But never fear, readers. I'm back!

-A.A.