Graduation and The Family I Never Talk About

Last Friday my baby sister graduated from nursing school so The Girl and I traveled to Georgia to be with the family on this special day. It seems that my mom and sisters feel slighted because I’ve never mentioned them on my blog. Truth is, I didn’t talk about them on purpose because not everyone appreciates being the subject of a blog post, but OH NOW THEY’VE OPENED A CAN OF WORMS.

So, without further ado, I present the family:

This is the entire gang:

Far left: Crazy sister Christi who believes it is much better to look dorky on purpose than to try and look cute and end up looking dorky accidentally. Her husband is a youth pastor and she teaches High School girls. She says her class tells everyone Phoebe off Friends is their SS teacher. And in this picture? I think she is doing the Carlton Dance. Jump On It, Sis.

Next is Me: Self explanatory. I’m the oldest and shortest sister – as everyone loves to remind me.

Next is Sister Nikki. She wants to have a life-threatening disease but it hasn’t worked out for her yet. Thank goodness. We also have the same weird nose and forehead that is sliding off our face. We’ve decided by the time we are 70 we’ll be talking out of our necks.

Next is Princess Sister Casey: She’s the graduate and the baby of the clan. I am so incredibly proud of how hard she worked to get through school! She is spoiled rotten because basically, she was mom’s do-over kid. I’m not bitter, really.

Next is Mom: I can map my life according to all the quirks and ailments my mom has already experienced. We have the exact same difficult-textured hair and spider veins in our legs. In fact, we must also share the same brain as it seems neither of us have one on the same day, ever.

And Last but Not Least is my Stepdad, Roddy: Roddy is our Steady One. He is calm, cool, and collected. And I’m imagining a little grateful that we only all go out to dinner together once every twenty-one years. Because, well, we get a little loud at restaurants. And everywhere else for that matter. We don’t get to all be together much so when we do, it’s a throwdown.

This picture is just the sisters plus my niece Kayla in the blue shirt. She is our resident Rachel Ray. She will be a Senior this Fall and plans on attending culinary school in Atlanta after that. We don’t know where she came from. And see Christi again there on the left? That’s her Kelly Ripa pose. Christi is Kayla’s mom.

Notice Kayla standing on the other side of the picture.

Far away from her mother.

And I just love this next picture of me and The Girl – except for the fact I have a platypus nose. I have very few pictures of us together and so I have to make a big deal out of it when I get one. She was an absolute angel through hours of ceremonies. (Luke and the boys had ballgames or else the day would have quickly become a disaster of epic proportions.)


I was thinking of starting a regular feature with stories from our childhood but then I got afraid the mom and sisters would retaliate so let’s just let the pictures be enough, ‘kay? Consider yourselves formally introduced!