A Trip Down Memory Lane

Do Max and I look at all alike?  Here we are, captured by our mothers, each of us proudly showing off our first missing tooth-gaps:

Here're a few pictures of me when I was really little.  Before any teeth started falling out of my head.  I loved dollies and wearing big hats, just like Ryann does!

In this next set of photos, I'm playing with friends from waaaaay back.  People like Farid Atiyeh (who is sadly no longer with us), Bri (Shannon) Betts - who I'm still friends with to this day and who is also a crazy 32-hour a week working mom of three young ones.  I'm also seen washing my nanny's truck.  Now that's a smart nanny - get the kids to wash your vehicle for you.  I'm not going to lie - I took a page from her book.  I sat on our newly poured front stoop and watched Max, Ryann, and Adam wash the van yesterday.  Rachel (my nanny...at the time...she's not my nanny anymore) is one of my Facebook friends!

While I was growing up, I pined for a brother.  Maybe I've said this before - I loved boys and wished I had one at home to marvel at.  And one that lived with us so he could bring his friends home for me to marvel at.  So I think Ryann is blessed to have two brothers.  But when I see pictures like this, it reminds me anew about how I'm just a little sad that she didn't get a sister.  Here's what sisters do (when they're not fighting) - the older one talks on the phone, probably to a boyfriend and braids the younger one's hair while the younger one sucks on a sucker (or something...knowing my sister, it was some kind of candy):

Kristy (Hansen) VanderVegt, Cally (Johnson) Stevens, and Kevin Koontz (all Facebook Friends) star in this classic, taken at Circle R Ranch Horse Camp circa 1993 or so:

Deanna's daughter, Olyvia, will start playing the trombone next year.  One of the photos my mom dug up during the big move is of me, when I played the trombone.  I think this was fifth grade:

Gotta love those glasses!  Oh, and the perm.  Of course there's the perm.

Then, I decided instrument-playing was not for me.  Instead, I was destined for the big screen (you'll see Facebook friends, Cally (Johnson) Stevens and Sarah Parker in these snaps).  Cally's a flapper girl with me and Sarah's looking angsty and like she's going to trip me with her outstretched arm and fist, while I'm blindfolded:



I'd gotten contacts in 6th grade.  I started participating in theater around that time.  These pictures are from middle school.



I loved theater but couldn't sing so once I moved on to high school, I had to find a new pastime.  I decided it would be boys.  Oh did I love me some boys.  There was Josh (with the earring - mom wasn't too keen on that), Daron (we're dressed in matching plaids for the Sadie Hawkins dance), Scott (he's also wearing a plaid in our picture but we didn't go to any dances at school together, maybe we danced at Horse Camp together....that's where we met):

And then there was THE ONE:

Here's what I wrote on the back of this picture:

I just can't compete.  The guy has been doing sweet, thoughtful things that he knows I'll love for the past 16 or so years.  I try to do sweet, thoughtful things for Stu as much as I can but I'll never catch up.  I ended up with the best husband a woman could ever have.