{circa 1991}
We are a small group, but that is just us. I know I talk about my Mom & sister, but you don't hear much about my Dad. My parents have been married over 30 years{can't remember exact year right now}. I always thought their age gap was interesting. My Mom is ten years younger than my Dad...and my Dad is 10 years younger than my Mom's parents. But anyway...
My Mom is a great lady, when we were kids she stayed home with us, and then once we were off at school she went back to college. After earning her degree in education she went back while I was in high school to be a school administrator. Now she is a vice principal at a Jr. High. She was always involved in church, and kept us very involved. I think I was in every children's play until I moved to youth group. She is a great lady who is very family orientated and really cares about the kids to deals with at school. Which is hard to do, you can't stand a disrespectful little sucker who's sole goal is to annoy you, but you want to help them at the same time.
Let's keep on with the women in the family, my poor father hasn't even had a boy dog since we were born.
My sister, Laura, is 5 years younger than me...poor thing had to grow up with me. I was a mean older sibling. Laura is super smart and has spent many a days correcting my spelling and acting as my own personal thesaurus. She was always the honor student growing up. She was also very shy, but people claimed she didn't talk because I talked for her. Of the two of us, she took after my Dad's side and always looked like the Puerto Rican side of the family. I do feel bad that I was such a noticed loud mouth that when she got to high school teachers would always say "Oh, your Emily's sister", I would not have been good at following in my footsteps. Good thing she was the youngest one. We have recently started picking on Laura, Daddy calls her the accident child. {they tried for 7 yrs to get pregnany w/ me then were surprised w/ Laura 5 yrs later}
Now for the sole male in the family, until recently. My Dad is a very funny guy who always got great joy out of tormenting us. We also spent a lot of time playing outside with him. When we were kids he breed {what is the past tense of that} rabbits, so much fun for us. He is a very laid back kind of guy, probably why I ended up marrying a laid back guy. Unlike most families my Dad was not the disciplinarian, but if you ticked him off enough to get in trouble you had REALLY ticked him off. Once Mom told him to spank me, he took off his belt...so I took off mine. I told him if he hit me I was hitting him back, he died laughing and couldn't do it. Love that about him, enough humor and you can get out of anything.
That seems to be the way our family always worked, humor. We aren't the crying type, we were always laughing. I love my functionally dysfunctional family. We are basically your run of the mill middle class family with loving parents who did everything they could to give us the childhood we deserved. Had they loved us more they would have never bought that maroon mini van in the 90's that ended up being my high school car.
What do y'all love about your family?
