The Pink Lemonade Blog: Catching Up-- Day 3, 4, 5, and 6!

Remember how I said that Katie's 30 Day Blog Challenge would be a great way to force myself to blog?

I've already missed four days!

But I have every intention of keeping up. So here it goes.

Day 3: My First Love

I could write about past boyfriends here, but why bother?

This is my lover, Sarge.

My family got Sarge as a puppy when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. He started off like any any puppies-- crazy, chewing anything and everything, and pretty annoying. I shipped off to college during Sarge's hyper heyday, and he had definitely mellowed by my summer vacation. I loved Sarge, despite his frequent relapses into puppy behavior (shoe stealing, pillow humping, leash pulling...) He's also pretty darn handsome, don't you think?

Day 4: My Parents

I am very lucky to have two amazing parents who have been married for 28 years. They are two very different people, but they balance one another out in many ways. I definitely notice that I an slowly becoming this weird hybrid of their personalities! Bizarre.

{on my wedding day}

My parents met in high school and started dating. My dad graduated and went to UVA, and the next year my mom did the same. They got married in January 1982. So they've pretty much been together forever.

My dad is the oldest of five brothers and sisters. He studied engineering and is a whiz at computery stuff. He works at a defense consulting company. He's also incredibly handy. He can build and fix just about anything (with moderate cursing and self-injury.) He also loves to make plans! It's all about efficiency, people. This is where I got this weird preconceived notion that all road trips must begin at 4:00 AM and that all things about vacation will be planned by a man.

{my boutiner pinning skills were not satisfactory}

{always laughing about something!}

My mom is the oldest of three girls. She is a social studies teacher at a private Catholic school now, but was a public school teacher in the past. We bond over stories of educational issues and political discussions. She is truly a Renaissance woman and incredibly creative. She is great at her job and always finding new lesson ideas, she loves decorating (and redecorating and redecorating), she's got great style, she is an excellent cook, endlessly crafty, and still manages to keep things clean and organized. She basically kept our family running when all of us kids were under one roof! This is who I get my creative, artsy streak from, but it's a shame I never picked up that whole "clean and organized" part.

{pretty much Martha Stewart}

{and gorgeous too!}

Day 5: My Siblings

In addition to wonderful parents, I also ended up with three siblings who kept life interesting.

Christine is the oldest. She's a high school teacher in a town near Virginia Beach. We were born three years apart, so I pretty much grew up wanting to be her. I stole her clothes and followed her around and pretty much annoyed the crap out of her. She did teach me a lot of stuff though, like how to shave my legs and how to play volleyball. She was very athletic, and I was less so, but I liked going to her games (as long as it wasn't soccer because soccer bores me.) After I graduated high school, I went to a college close to her house and we hung out more and got much closer. Now we can talk about anything, even though we definitely know how to push one another's buttons. :)

{she's pretty goofy}

{love this picture of us!}

I am the second child, and my brother Tommy is next. He is an officer in the Air Force, married to a great girl, and they just moved to Alabama. Soon after that, they'll move to Florida for a while. Tommy has always been very smart, disciplined, and motivated, but at the same time he's the one of us with the most ridiculous sense of humor, and he's very laid-back. Doesn't that seem like a contradiction? He's always cracking jokes and is fun to spend time with.

{just like my dad, always laughing at something!}

{Tommy and his wife Melissa, courtesy of Carley Rehberg Photography}

Joey is the youngest. He's a senior in high school and having fun scoping out prospective colleges. Just like Tommy, he's always cracking jokes. Like, always. He runs cross-country for his school and is in the Civil Air Patrol. He is a pretty typical high schooler, but he gets along with kids really well. Our younger cousins love hanging around him.