Favorite Things Friday

The following is in honor of Jessica's birthday this past week. Enjoy!

• Her dimple under her eye (see picture)
• She’s got the baby-of-the-family-syndrome bad! …But who would want it to be any different? Well, okay, maybe we did want it to be different when she came home from her first trip to Junior Camp. It was pretty obvious (by both sight and smell…and the suitcase full of clean clothes) that she had only done minimal clothes-changes and maybe one shower the entire week. But she reassured us that she had swam in the lake every day, so it was okay (though our noses still suggested otherwise)! I’m sure if she’d been an older sibling she would have been much more responsible.
• She’s very trusting (probably as a result of the baby-of-the-family-syndrome). For example, we were shopping at the mall when Jess was pretty little and she lost her purse containing her little savings of cash (I think it was like $20 or something extravagant like that). Mom was pretty worried about finding that little purse, but Jess was quite unconcerned: “Don’t worry, Mom; I have my name on it.” And, sure enough, some elderly gentleman had picked the purse up and returned it to the mall office where we retrieved it later, with the money still inside. Now she’s much more discerning…except where her brother-in-law is concerned!
• Jess was a funny little kid when we were growing up. She went along with anything. Some of my favorite memories revolve around the hours that we girls would spend playing Barbies. Jessica’s Barbie characters were always very interesting. She would usually have at least one ‘crazy’ person in her Barbie family that would keep us in stitches! Jess always wanted to keep Julie and I happy so that we would let her ‘in’ on all the ‘cool’ stuff we were doing as ‘grown up’ girls. One day in particular, I remember we were all working on our school work together and Julie and I were having so much fun making Jess do things for us and poor Jess was completely clueless to our manipulations! “Jess, can you get me a new pen?” “Jess, my pencil needs to be sharpened” “Jess, can you change the tape? I’m getting tired of listening to this one.” Etc., etc., etc. I think a big reason she was so willing to do all these things for us was because she simply didn’t want to be working on her school work. ;) So, Julie and I finally asked her to go outside and get Josie (our Golden Retriever) and bring her in. If I remember correctly, Jess did protest a little at that idea; but being infected with the baby-of-the-family-syndrome, she finally went out and got the dog to make us happy. No sooner did she get Josie in the house and get herself busy with schoolwork again, but Mom came down! As soon as Mom saw Josie, she wanted to know who brought the dog in the house and then she sent poor unfortunate Jess (who was now in trouble with Mom for goofing off when she was supposed to be working on school) to take Josie (who was all too happy to be getting so much attention) back outside! Julie and I kept working diligently on our school stuff (Are you kidding? Of course we didn’t tell Mom it was OUR idea to bring Josie into the house!).
• Another favorite thing about Jess is her voice. She has a great talent for singing…which she mostly puts on display when she is either in the bathroom (where the acoustics apparently bring the best out in her voice) or in the basement (where she must sing at the top of her lungs in order to keep the scary monsters from coming out of the shadows to stuff her in a bag and hand her over to a mean scary bear that has been haunting her dreams since she was 2). She has two especially notable vocal talents: yodeling (demonstrated here) and laughing like Gertie on Oklahoma! (you know, that girl who tries to steal Curly and has that really annoying loud laugh).
• Since Jess was the baby-of-the-family, the rest of us kids did our very best to exploit her position. We usually did that by having her be the one to ask Dad those questions that would be a definite ‘No’ if any of the rest of us asked them. Picture this: little girl clad in a long flannel nightie approaching her daddy who was sitting in ‘his chair’ (I mean, seriously, who could resist?!) while the rest of us kids were huddled just around the corner where we could hear what transpired…. “Daddy, can we get a horse?” …The answer was still “No.”
• One last favorite thing. If Jess can’t figure out what to say, she just smiles. Smiling must be her favorite. Maybe she can post about that on her blog.