Megs

Megan.  My baby sister.  I've known her for 29 years now.  29 years of beautiful memories - lots of laughter, movie lines, dancing, softball playing, game-playing, family-time spending.....with some occasional tears, heartache, biting, fighting and mix-ups.  (And with the biting, I'm not referring to what I did to Meesh on the day she came home from the hospital, but to little miss bitey-pants herself....Megan...the one who would follow you around chomping her teeth threateningly.  Fortunately that phase didn't last too long.)  For any of those less than pristine moments (the "bitey" and "fightey" mentioned above) there are more than enough beautiful moments to make up for them. Our childhood was the classic "we wouldn't trade a moment of it" situation.  And in a lot of ways we have the "classic" birth order roles and traits - Mel as the oldest, Meesh as the middle, and Megs as the baby.  Each of us unique, and yet somehow so closely interwoven.  It's been 29 years, and we still confide in each other about everything, and spend and enjoy probably more time together than a lot of other families do.  As I said when I wrote about Meesh on her birthday - it's an amazingly close bond that I share with these ladies that I call my sisters.

Perhaps with Megan and I, even though we are totally close now .... we didn't start out as close as Meesh and I maybe did.  Meesh and I shared the room, even the bed (for a while), were closer in age, shared some school together.  Megan and I had the four years of separation, and just maybe didn't have as much in common for the first part of our lives - the age difference of course got less and less significant as we grew up.  There's just a bigger difference in 4 and newborn....and 8 and 4 than there is between 33 and 29.  I kind-of remember "mothering" her more than I do with Meesh.....I choose to refer to it as mothering, but maybe she remembers it as bossing?  :) 

However, even with this greater age gap....that element of family, of sharing everything....that was still present.  There was no excluding in our home...and when we played, we PLAYED.  I loved the hours we spent playing house....school...barbies.....turning our Little Tikes teeter totter on its side and thus into a spaceship....or playing boat.  Man, boat was the best.  We sat on the double bed (aka, the boat) and threw EVERY last stuffed animal we had into the "ocean", which was everything surrounding the boat.  (Looking back, this would have been ideal if we could have played the game in the room with the blue shag carpet....how perfect would that have been as "ocean water"?  Oh well, we made-do with the red shag.)  And we used this crusty, yellow, plastic baseball bat to fish each animal out and nurse them back to health with our doctor's kit.  Occasionally one of the doctors would fall in too, and had to be fished out.  That was tough work.  I see elements of this kind of play, of this kind of creativity, the element of "pretend" in children these days...but it just doesn't feel quite the same as it did back then.

It was always the three of us....three peas in a pod.

Oh!  And...while I have this public audience....I'd just like to note one more point while I'm on the topic of play.  If Megan ever tries to tell you that out of our three Rainbow Brite dolls, Patty O'Green was hers...please remind her that no...hers was in fact Shy Violet.  Megan, here's a picture of the dolls to refresh your memory.  Yours. was. Shy. Violet.  :) :)  (Sorry, inside joke.)



I could go on and on about the memories....the night my parents left us home to go to sleep while they worked their second job, to return to the three of us having a grand ol' bed jumping party (still wish we'd have thought about the fact that in our old house, walking through the front door gave you a straight-line view into our bedroom - would have been nice to have not been caught mid-jump when they walked through the door).  Making scavenger hunts for each other....hundreds of softball games....ski trips.  Again I'm so, SO thankful for every single moment!

Softball days.

Ski trip!

I'm sure Megan remembers all of these things, and savors them the way I do.  I know the way we were raised and the experiences we shared have made us all who we are today ... and who Megan is today is something to praise and celebrate.  She will always be the baby of the family, but she is so much more than that.

She is a woman....a daughter....a sister.  In recent years she has become an aunt, and a wife....a pharmacist.

A beautiful moment at a beautiful wedding.

She is a beautiful and talented lady - someone who has excelled at much of what she's tried her hand at, whether that be dance, trumpet, volleyball, javelin, or academics.  She is an organizer, and she takes so much care in everything that she does.  You can especially see this in how she cares for her pharmacy patients - she really goes the extra mile for them, and it amazes me....just the sheer effort she puts into making sure things are done the correct way.

In May she moved to Salina - she and her husband Kynan are beginning a new chapter of their lives there.  She is now a pharmacy manager for the Dillon's pharmacy in Salina.  I'm happy for them, and excited what the future holds for them, but we miss her terribly.  I'm used to having her close by enough that I still got to see her on an occasional weeknight, and at least a couple of weekends per month.  Now that time has shrunk to maybe one weekend per month.  But we are adjusting - Tessaira, Gabe and Lauren still pick right up with Aunt Megan when they see her.  It is evident how much she loves them, and how much they love their Aunt Megan.  It just makes our times that we do spend together, that much more special.  She has a special energy about her.  She and Aunt Michelle jokingly banter about who is the "cool Aunt", but the reality is they are both amazing.  :)

Aunt Megan with Lo, Decmeber 2011 at Fogo de Chao on the Plaza!

Aunt Megan, Grandma, Gabe and Tessaira at the Discovery Center in Topeka.

Megan - keep shining your beautiful light for all to see.  Your love of God shines through in the way you approach every aspect of your life:  your hard work, your patient care, the way you treat others, the friend that you are to so many, and your positive attitude.  You're going to make a great mom someday!  You mean so much to so many people, especially to your family.  I LOVE YOU, and wish you a very happy birthday!!