ah to reminisce...

Spent part of the evening tonight chatting with my little sister, who is actually getting much bigger now (she's 14!). We randomly got to talking about our childhoods and all the funny stories we could remember. This is what we got:

how we first pronounced "grandma"--
Austin: gamma
Coy: gamby
Emily: gumpy
Nellie-Kate: dumpy
Mckenzie: gumby

Notice how it evolves each time from what the older one said... be careful when you listen to your siblings! :)

As you could probably guess, Nellie-Kate was always the sassy one... had a way of making everyone feel SO great about themselves :) You can imagine how grandma felt when the 3-year-old marched up at a family gathering and demanded in the snootiest voice a three-year-old can muster, "Dumpy! Get me chips." And if you could have seen the way she walked... she was always on a mission, everywhere she went. Swinging her arms and stomping her feet like no one had better get in her way or she would walk right over the top of them.

first words--
Austin: HOT! (said while pretending like i was going to touch a burner then quickly pulling back my hand)
Emily: hiding (they sang a song at her preschool about hiding... she would sway back and forth on the rug and say "hiding, hiding" :))
Mckenzie: Hi! (she greeted everyone she met multiple times... we figured she was headed towards being pretty friendly :))

Randomness runs in the family. Just about anything can be turned into a joke. Makes for a lively household (most of the time anyway), and a pretty healthy sense of humor! And yes, that pipe is made from tootsie rolls.Some of us hated hair brushing and showers,

and all of us ran around barefoot all the time, everywhere. Sometimes we would wear our socks out, but our dad's rule was either "go without socks or put your shoes on"... so we aimed for that. Unless of course dad wasn't around :) What was even better was when we could wear our swimsuits all day long. We played baseball, or kick the can, or hide and seek in the cul-de-sac on warm summer nights with the neighbor kids while all of our parents watched from front porches. We slept on our trampoline. Eventually we'd all turn into brown children from being in the sun so much. Mckenzie is the best example of this:

And even though we often fought (biggest rivalries: Coy & Austin vs. Nellie-Kate, and Nellie-Kate vs. Mckenzie. Although there was that time when Emily tried to tip Kate out of her cradle when she was first born... jealousy gets the better of all of us at some point :)), we always stuck together through all the hard stuff. Coy baptizing Mckenzie was just one of the highlights!
Sometimes when I'm away from them for so long, I forget. But those four kids were involved in most of my choice memories from childhood, and what can I say... I just LOVE us!!!