birthday boy

My baby brother is TWENTY-ONE today.  Wow. 

I was sad I couldn't be there to give him a huge birthday hug today but was grateful to have some time on the phone with him.  What a sweet, TINY little baby!  This picture would have been taken on Christmas Eve @ my Grandpa & Grandma Pearson's house, so he would have been 5 days old.  I was four and a half when he was born.  I don't remember too much about it.  I do remember the water being frozen when he was born (this is a problem when you have a farm of animals to care for).  I also remember dad going to buy him a little grey and blue outfit at Pamida to come home in.  Since he was born so close to Christmas, the hospital auxillary sent him home with a GIANT stocking.  Sweet, yes.  However, I did not take kindly to everyone walking in our house and commenting on how big his stocking was compared to mine.  I did not take kindly to this at all.  In fact, it made me cry.  Sob, actually.  In order to get me to calm down, my dad had to make up some crazy story that even though Josh's stocking was bigger, it would be harder to get into than mine because his actually had a flap over it in.  I'm not sure why I was so concerned.  We didn't do Santa at our house.  We didn't really even put gifts in stockings.  I guess I just didn't like everyone making such a big deal about this little baby and his stupid, huge stocking. . .

We are starting to make progress on the house.  It feels so good.  I'm starting to slowly regain some sanity.  Though, I can't say the weekend turned out quite how I thought it would.  For the first time in my life, I got a flu shot yesterday morning.  Ugh.  In the past I always figured that if I got the flu (I never get sick) I'd deal with it and let my body's natural immune system take care of things.  As I have a new job (will give details in future post) that will have me interacting with children with compromised immune systems in a hospital setting, I was strongly "encouraged" to get the shot.  I broke down and did it.  Unfortunately, by yesterday afternoon I felt like death.  I was achey and feverish and had a pounding headache and it was just not fun. 

I had been really excited to go to a Christmas party at the Allens last night, but alas, it was not going to happen.  I still felt pretty horrible this morning, so we didn't go to church (and the Sunday before Christmas is one of my favorite days to go to church all year, so I was really bummed).  I was feeling a bit more human this afternoon, so we went over and had a great afternoon w/ Matt & Jana.  We played boys against girls Cranium.  I have NEVER heard or seen Matt laugh as hard as he did when Philip did a "humdinger" and tried to hum the BeeGee's "Stayin Alive" in his "falsetto humming voice".  Hi.lar.ious.  It's so good to be back in the same part of the world as the two of them again. . .