grateful - no. 17

grateful | siblings

i have some great ones. we're oh-so-different. but i love them all so much. none of them live nearby. the closest is six hours away. so i'm grateful for smart phones and email and skype and all sorts of other ways we can keep up on each others' lives. 

i love scott for growing up before any child should - because he had to. for brushing it off his shoulders when we told him he couldn't play because he was too big or whatever our excuses were {although i don't feel too bad because he never let us have turns on mario bros.}. he's not a man of many words, but his words are kind and real. he's father to two of the cutest kids on this planet and his sweet wife is one of the most thoughtful people i know. when she heard about leah she wept. and that meant a lot. yup. i'm grateful for scott. 

i love dan for being dan. the family clown. he ruined every last family picture with his strained grins and tippy toes. he was way too cool for me in high school, but i was lucky enough on a few occasions to get the head nod. hey, it was acknowledgment. he used to re-gift his gifts for our birthdays. i got plenty of garfield comic books each year. he always said he had to marry a girl with a really weird last name to make it seem like kinnersley was an upgrade. he did it - he found a gruetzmacher. he just became a dad and his darling little son is seriously a clone of him. good thing he was a cute kid. grateful for that dan too. 

i love kelli. i really do. even though she's taller than me and skinner than me and has beautiful, BIG, brown eyes. i used to wish kelli was a boy. her name would have been brian, so that's what i called her. kelli will claim that i tried to kill her on more than one occasion {leaving the gate to the stairs open so she would take a tumble in her walker, nearly poking her eyes out with scissors, tempting her to climb out of her crib only for her to fall and get stitches on her lower lip, and more...}. i promise i didn't. but she DID get me in trouble for all of her mischief. she DID color on all my room decor and stuffed animals with sharpy pens and highlighters. but she also cheered me up when i was sick. and wrote me random notes telling me how cool i was. she still does that. we used to have matching clothes and i hated it. now we have matching clothes and i love it. and, believe it or not, little sisters grow up. they get married to great guys and have adorable kids. yup, plural. she passed me up. grateful for that kelli. 

and i'm grateful for their significant others to boot.

...and their little ones.