How many stamps do you need to send a birthday card to Heaven?

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to start a blog but for some reason, I put it off till today. I didn't realize it at the time but today is my brothers birthday. And so it seemed perfectly logical to me to start this off with some things about my bro that I find to be interesting. Hopefully you also find this to be entertaining. 

1. He would have been 27 years old today. For his 3rd birthday, he had a cake that was shaped like Santa. We made little paper crowns for everyone to wear and I insisted on wearing my Lady Lovely Locks clip on purple hair extensions. It was quite the sight.

2. He NEVER cried (think Chuck Norris, people) No matter how many times they took blood or he got a shot. No matter how many home surgeries or trips to the emergency room. Never a tear...

3. He could drive anything. Its like he was Evil Kenevil or something.  Give him a dirt bike, Nissan, bicycle, skateboard, roller blades, ice skates, go kart (traumatic experience for me for those of you who remember this incident) or whatever he could find that made him go faster and it was like he just knew how to work it.

4. He was fun. The most simple things could be turned into a nonsensical game that would keep us occupied for hours with either good hearted fun (i.e. "Cinderelly!!!!") or quality time in the local emergency room (i.e. That time we thought jumping on the bed would be more fun while holding a safety flag for a bicycle.....WRONG!) Either way, I spent very little of my youth bored.

5. He was a huge asset to have on your team during a snowball fight. He had a great arm and dead on aim. I actually have a little reel of memory footage of him hitting those Borga kids right in the face. Of course, we're talking about MY brother here so there is also plenty of footage of him hitting ME directly in the face too. Which reminds me....

6. His right hook was no joke. I don't think we fought more often than other siblings but I know we had it out a few times. Namely the time he punched me directly in the nose. I sat in my dads big brown corduroy recliner with a bag of peas on my face, bawling my eyes out and Steve just sat there grinning to himself. So I complained to my dad about the gloating and he said that I deserved to get punched in the face by my brother because I was taunting him. It took a very long time for me to realize this but somewhere between then and how, I realized, he's right. Coincidentally, I think this incident may be the reason I have this flat part on the bridge of my nose. 

7. As a child, he wanted to own ShoeTown and Fayva. I sometimes wonder if the closing down of these stores somehow traumatized him and caused his obsession with clean shoes that lasted throughout his life.  Standing in the food store parking lot looking at the soles of his shoes "AAAAHHH!!!  They're getting dirty!!!"

8. He appreciated the little things in life... when he was drinking. I mean who doesn't love the story about Gods Toenail? hehe! Its great. If you haven't heard it, I'd be happy to tell you.

9. He didn't like chocolate. This always baffled me because I'm such a lover of chocolate. Maybe when God was divvying up the percentages of likes vs dislikes of chocolate, he thought it'd be interesting to give me 100% chocolate likeness and Steve 0% chocolate likeness. It made dividing the Halloween candy easier!

10. He still owes me $10 from that time he took Jessie on a date to PizzaHut on my bike and then to the picnic table. 

11. Once, He mailed Jessie a pen that didn't work. Well, what had happened was, We thought it'd be fun to cut out a bunch of underwear models from the Bradlees catalogue and mail them to Steve. He was nieve enough to believe that these were pictures of Jessies cousin (who actually was 15 years older than we lead him to believe when we mailed her 7th grade school photo to him) and so he thought he should send her a gift back and mailed this pen but never realized the address he was mailing this to was actually 2 doors down from our own house. 

12. My sister and he once volunteered to be the voices of Little Sally Suzie and Little Timmy Tommy for a GlueOn commercial on mine and Jessie's radio show. "Oh no...My eye fell out. I need GlueOn!!!" Thanks guys, we couldn't have done it without you.

 

I could go on but I will not because I fear that much more and I'll be the only one left paying attention. Basically what I'm trying to say is Happy Birthday Brother!!  We are all so grateful to have had you in our lives.