A tribute to me because it's almost my birthday!

I rather enjoy when things come full circle.

My niece Rosie was born on a chilly January morning when I was 11 years old. That summer, soon after I turned 12, our family took a trip down to Utah (from Alberta, where we were currently living) and left me with my sister Kelli to be a mother's helper for a week or two.

This past January, just a couple of days after her birthday, my niece Rosie's sweet baby Dean was born on a chilly morning when Zoë was 10 years old. And soon after Zoë turned 11 we sent her on a trip up to Tennessee to stay with Rosie and Austin and be a mother's helper for a week.

Andrew and I decided to repack all our "archive" boxes before shipping them off to Utah, so I came across the picture of me with Rosie and sent it in a text message to Zoë and Rosie.

Rosie reported that Zoë exclaimed: “What?! How does she look the same but just without glasses?? She doesn’t age!”

(They had been watching Chuck together, which is apparently a show that we need to watch—it's Austin's favourite and is similar to Psych. Good reviews from the whole family...but somehow Andrew and I just missed getting into it—"somehow" meaning a new baby Rachel plus a move to Cairo).

Later when Zoë checked her own device she texted back, "Mom! How do you look the same age you do now?" 

I told her that it all boils down to good genes (and that she's very welcome should she happened to have inherited those genes).

It was certainly sweet of her to think that I look the same as 12-year-old me nearly thirty years later (especially because I've already started giving myself jump scares in the mirror—like, "Who are you, Old Lady?!").

A bit later in the evening we were going through some of Andrew's school papers, trying to decide what to keep and what to toss, and we found a personal history he wrote for Mrs. Eisenhart's US History Honours class (we both took that class the same year but were in different sections—I have no idea where my personal history is from that class). Anyway, near the end he was describing his future and, having only recently returned from a summer trip to Washington state to visit Aunt Linda and Uncle Trevor (as well as his cousin Richard, who also lived in the Seattle area, and his best friend Ross who had recently moved out there) he foretold of attending BYU for a year, going on a two-year mission, coming home to finish his degree, and then going to law school. 

After that he was going to move his family (he'd get married while he was in college and would have a "nice wife" and "nice kids") to either Seattle, Washington or Orem, Utah to practice law.

(This was apparently before he went to Europe and decided that he'd much rather live abroad). 

"Aw, look!" I said, laughing. "I check all your boxes."

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Says here you wanted to find a 'nice' wife. You really won the lottery!"

"All I said was 'nice'?" he asked, laughing as well. 

We laughed about that because in Young Women lessons at church when I was growing up, it was not uncommon for us to be prompted to write lengthy lists of attributes we wanted in a husband (I do not think this is as common of an encouraged rumination these days as it was in my day). The Young Men were not encouraged to do the same thing very often, though Andrew recalls one activity where they did consider their future wives. 

"I think my full list was...nice, pretty, and smart," he said. "But asking for a pretty wife in a school assignment felt a little scandalous. Still, you do check all those boxes."

Even of his extended list!

How lucky is he?!