Happy Birthday, Jeremy!!

Bubba, Bubba, Bubba...where to begin? He and I didn't get off to the greatest start, it's a classic tale of sibling rivalry. He tried to sell me for a quarter to his classmate Michael Zerr at his 3rd grade, classroom Easter party. I'd make myself cry and blame it on him. He'd tie my shoes together in knots so that I couldn't get them untied. I invented the term "smiling me off" to get him in trouble.

I'm 4 years younger people, of course he sounds like the master of sister picking, it's hard for a kindergartner to think of good retaliations...they still make up knock knock jokes like "knock knock. who's there? ummmm....ear....HAHAHAHA!"

But somewhere over the years we started picking on the same people and it's been friendship ever since.

I love you lots, Bubba! Happy Birthday!!

Happy Birthday, Brian!!

11 months and 8,000 family birthday posts later we arrive at the second to last family birthday of the year, and perhaps, the most anticipated post by one, Brian Garrett. That's right, today is my big brother's birthday. I searched high and low, on facebook and in boxes of pictures at Mom's house and I could not find one good picture of the two of us together.

Here we are on Brian's 18th(ish) birthday where he got the latest in personal music players, a walkman. Neither of us are looking at the camera and Jeremy is overacting...fail.

Look, he was nice enough to let me try it out, but now my cute little face is blocked by his big ole hands.

This one had potential, but Brian isn't looking forward, my face is cut off and I can't decide if that is a homeless person's dress I'm wearing, or a nightgown (judging from the food left on the plates, our family tradition of birthday breakfast and my continued dislike of getting dressed before noon, I'm going with nightgown).

Perhaps God knows that a photo containing two such good looking faces would turn the world upside down or maybe neither of us sits still long enough to get a good shot. Either way, this travesty needs to be remedied tout de suite. Check back around Christmas time when Brian and I will be featured in the first ever Unfiltered Nonsense redemption photo.

Happy birthday, Brian!! I love you!

Welcome to the jungle, Sammers

This post is just a touch late, but I can still justify the timing if you hang with me here.

Jeremy & Trisha welcomed their first born into the world on Thursday, Nov. 18th and named her Samantha Jane Garrett. While the doctor delivered her two weeks early she still weighed in at an impressive 7lbs 11oz, 20 inches.

Though not readily apparent on this blog from a timing standpoint, I was beaming with excitment over the pending birth and timed my arrival to the hospital perfectly. All the grandparents had gotten to hold her and she was primmed for some "Lulu time."

Here I am telling her she looks just like me.

About 10 seconds after I started holding her the nurse took her away from me to check her blook sugar levels again. Long story short, they ended up putting her in to the NICU :(

I went back on Saturday with my sister Kim and Sam had clearly had a visit from Papa Garrett during the night because she had already pulled out her feeding tube once. I could just hear him say "Ok Sam, wanna see that lady out there run in here really fast? Just give this a real good tug."

Here's a picture of Daddy trying to teach her how to eat and breath at the same time so she can leave the hospital. It's a classic Garrett family problem, we just get so excited to eat breathing becomes non-essential. I mean, her Uncle Brian was so into eating a Thanksgiving dinner once he broke into a sweat :)

This is just a really cute picture of Grammy loving on her 7th grandchild.

So after being in the NICU for a week Sam decided she was done with that place, pulled out her feeding tube for a second time, started eating like a champ and went home with Mommy and Daddy today!

Congrats Bubba & Trisha! Love you all!!

Happy Birthday Sonya!!

That's right folks, ANOTHER October birthday for the Garrett family. Today belongs to my sister-in-law, Sonya, who I've known since Kindergarden and can blame/credit for my budding owl collection.

I can't wait until she opens this years Christmas present from me!

Happy Birthday SonSon, I'm super glad you are part of my crazy family. Keep rockin' :) I love you!

Happy Birthday Emily!!

She's super sporty,

got a heart of gold

and just a touch oneriness.

She's EMILY and it's her birthday today! She may be my third oldest niece, but she holds a very special place in my heart because she is my first and only goddaughter.

One of my favorite Emily stories is from when she was probably about 3 or 4 years old. Kim, her and I were back home at mom and dad's house and that whole weekend she had been wearing these cute butterfly jammers to bed. Dad, being dad, teased Emily every time she put them on saying, "Hey, those are my butterfly jammies." And after about the third day of this treatment, Emily had enough. Dad had gotten his hands on the jammers and was teasing her and teasing her that those were his jammies and not hers. She yanked the jammers from his hands and yelled, "I'M TAKING MY JAMMIES AND GETTING THE HELLLLL OUT OF HERE!"

Hand to God, it was the funniest thing I've ever heard a sweet little girl say. And what spawned from that was a great tradition with her and Papa, exchanging butterfly gifts they made for each other.

Happy 14th birthday, Miss Emily!! I love you!

Papa's tree

As a family, we were overwhelmed with generous donations from friends and family when Dad passed away. With his memorial we were able to give back to those who helped take care of him (and us) Hays Medical Center, Our Lady of Lourdes (rehab hospital), as well as set up a guardian angel fund at our family church where parish members, who have to be away from home for extended periods of time because of medical problems, receive some money to help with expenses.

One of the "funner" ways we get to honor Dad's life is by planting a tree in Park's new city park...i like to call it "Papa's tree."

Here is the ground crew working hard on starting the hole...

Here is Kory, the littlest one, working hard and Payton using all her weight trying to use the shovel...

...let's be honest here, if I had used the shovel like that I would have hurt myself. So as you can see it was probably for the best if I held Maddie and supervised :)

Abby helped us decided when the hole was the right size.

Getting ready to put the tree in the ground.

Time to put some sort of important root stuff in the bottom of the hole and fill in the hole.

Paul makes sure it has plenty of water.

So there, in a nutshell, is our Memorial Day weekend. According to Google images this is what the autumn ash will look like in the fall...

The leaves turn a beautiful purple in the fall...just in time for K-State football, right Brian? :)

Even Hitler is upset

Back before all this March Madness hit, K-State had a second meeting with KU in regular season play. Even though KU was on the heels of a nasty loss to Oklahoma State, and the game was in Lawrence and it was senior night, I went ahead and made a bet with my niece Kendahl, (who some how ended up a KU fan) that the loser had to get their picture taken wearing the winning teams clothing and make that their profile photo on facebook for a week.

As many of you know, we did in fact lose that game. So I would like to share some of the outtakes from that photo shoot. I was doing a really good job pouting for the camera, but the photographers kept laughing at me and it was hard to stay in character.

I felt like today was a good day to share this story because I can end by gloating that K-State is in the Sweet Sixteen and well, thanks to my new best friends Ali Farokhmanesh and "Guy with crazy chops and a really, really, really lame green shamrock tattoo on his shoulder", KU is not.

Here is a video of Hitler reacting the same way many others, presumably not KSU or Mizzou fans, did after this weekend.

Leaves of Life

Yesterday was kind of a neat day in the Garrett family, my brother Brian was able to put up my Dad's leaf on the "Leaves of Life" Tree at Hays Medical Center. We were able to have a leaf in Dad's memory because of the donation given to the Oncology department from Dad's memorial fund. It only seemed fitting to give back to the people who not only took care of Dad while he battled cancer, but also took care of us and put up with our large, sometimes loud, fire-alarm-setting-off family.

The three tree trunks are sculpted out of red oak and the canopy of metal leaves bear the names of cancer victims and survivors.

It's a beautiful symbol of solidarity and hope for those who go there to receive treatments.

Love you guys!