a Christmas card in the mail

Before you say "huh?!", I really did get a Christmas card today, all the way from Canada. One of our oldest family friends (who has literally known me since I was the proverbial twinkle in my father's eye) wanted to see how long it would take to send a piece of mail from my hometown to London. I'm not exactly sure how long it took, but I'm pretty sure it got here much quicker than she was expecting...

I am proud to say that this is the first Christmas card she has ever sent in the mail - so even if it was a little early, it was still a fantastic thing to find in our mailbox. (hint hint to those of you with my address - i love getting mail... and yes those postcards / letters are on their way)

Inside the card was a sweet note and these:

These pictures were taken in 1983. I was four years old, and as you can see, sported a set of glasses that clearly were built using coke bottles. My father looks SO young in this picture - he doesn't have a beard like that anymore and has long since gotten that distinguished salt and pepper hair that only men seem to wind up with in their 50s. My mom was in her 30's when these pictures were taken and still looked 22 (I'm so glad I inherited her genes). The little boy in the pictures is my brother (then tw0 years old), who took great pleasure in torturing his big sis through most of his life but now seems to have settled down a bit. Maybe we get along better now because I don't live at home anymore. Maybe we've grown up... The only people who could really tell you the reason for our newfound friendship are my parents - who I'm pretty sure would think twice before calling either of us grownups.

I'm slowly getting pictures put up on the walls (courtesy of the stick tack given to me from one of the teachers at the school I'm working at right now - she had three boxes of it) and each time a new one is added, it feels a little more like home.

Now I can look at the pictures of a very young me with pigtails and thick glasses and smile as I remember the little girl that I was. Imaginative, talkative, friendly, sensitive, and loved to be around people - I guess some things never change. I can remember my parents singing "You Are My Special Angel" as they danced me around the living room (still makes me cry when I hear that song). And I can remember the times between the seemingly endless battles with my brother when the two of us stuck up for each other or shared a joke that nobody else would have found funny.

I'm not sure if Susie reads this blog (we've been calling each other "Susie" for my entire life and I still don't know why, since neither of our names are similar), but if she is reading this - Thanks so much for the card and the pictures! Lucky me got to experience that warm Christmas feeling two months early and I have you to thank for it...