| May 16, 2002 2:00 AM My family is great. We have soooo much fun together. I miss when we were kids and my sisters would play games with me. We had the BEST fake restaurant ever! We even had really cool menus that we made and we called our restaurant "Yook's Nook." We played airplane and used envelopes to cut slits in them like those ticket holder thingys and we had this great cart that we used to push up and down the aisle to pass out drinks and popcorn. We set up chairs and used belts as the seat belts on the plane. We used to play lockers and used these drawers that had keyed locks on them and our parents would let us use them to play high school. My sisters always got to be the teachers since they're so much older, but it was still fun. We would use our intercom to play "college." Or, what we THOUGHT college was like. One of my sisters would yell over the intercom "Cock-a-doodle-doooooooo! Time for breakfast!" Cuz for some reason we thought that college was a lot like camp and we would have wake up calls and alarms for when it was meal time. Hee hee. The most fun thing to do though, was lip sync. We would get out these old Amy Grant tapes and we would use flashlights as microphones and dance around our parents' room. OH! And one time, we were playing wedding, and we made my brother be the flowergirl and we put him in a dress. My dad was not happy. =) But my brother didn't care. He loved to dress up. I used to play with Playmobile with my brother. I thought those were way better than Legos. I really wanted the huge Playmobile house but it was like 100 dollars or something like that. Family vacations were the best. One of the earliest vacations I remember was Africa when I was 5. It was actually a medical missions trip that my dad took our whole family on. I remember playing with my pound puppies on the beds that were surrounded by netting to keep the mosquitoes away. And the electricity went out at the same time every night so we had to do laundry before then and make sure we had all our lanterns and flashlights. I learned how to play solitaire and gin rummy on that trip. Since I was only 5, my mom would heat up water on the stove so I could take a warm bath in the sink. My sisters had to take cold showers. =) And these little boys would come everyday to our door asking for my sister's watch. (She had a flourescent SwatchWatch...very cool then) I remember going to a grocery store and seeing half the shelves completely empty. We would split a granola bar 5 ways. And I can't ever eat chocolate pudding without flinching a little because my mom used to grind up my malaria pills and put it in the pudding cuz I couldn't swallow pills. Malaria pills taste NASTY! No amount of chocolate pudding could cover up that taste. But yeah, that trip was amazing. I wish I had been a little bit older so I could have enjoyed the experience more, but I think God has really blessed me with good memories of that trip cuz surprisingly, a lot of things are still really clear from that trip. Road trips were hilarious. We used to drive from LA to the Bay Area every year to visit my mom's family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I remember one road trip, my sister Rachel told stupid jokes the whole way up and she was laughing so hard she started to cry. We laughed simply cuz she was laughing so hard. We'd all pile into our mini-van and my sister Mandy would always have her Walkman on and she'd be singing Mariah Carey songs really loud. =) I could sing "Vision of Love" before I even knew Mariah Carey's name. =) Disneyworld was really fun but not as fun as it was when I was younger. We went when I was in high school, sort of as our last family vacation before my sister got married. It was great! After about half a day at Disneyworld, we got tired of it and my sisters REALLY wanted to go shopping, so we went outlet shopping. And it was so humid, we would yell at each other when someone would touch the other person cuz it was so sticky and gross. After awhile, I would touch my sisters just to annoy them. It was funny. Dude, we went on so many family vacations now that I think about it. I wish I had time to write about them all because I had so much fun on every single one of them. The last vacation we took was to Mammoth to go fishing cuz my brother-in-law, Stan, LOVES to fish. His family came with us. Fishing with my sisters is really fun. My brother in law is too hardcore. =) We got up at the crack of dawn (okay, like 5 am) and went out on the boat. My sisters and I LOVE to talk but Stan thinks it scares away the fish so we couldn't jabber on like we usually do. We spent 6 hours on that boat! I finished an entire novel sitting out there! I caught 3 fish. In my opinion, 3 fish after 6 hours in the sun being quiet is not worth it. =) I know many will beg to differ, but that's just my opinion. I didn't do anymore fishing after that day. =) I just really love my family. I think we have a LOT of fun together. And it's very rare when we're all under the same roof now since we're all in different parts of the country, but I guess it makes it that much more special when we are all together. I hope everyone can congregate in the same place again soon. I never laugh as much as I do when I'm with my sisters and my brother. =) Did I mention I really love my family? =) Random aside: HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH!!! =) |