WHY WON'T YOU EAT YOUR SANDWICHES???

My mom & stepdad left to go home to California today. Boo, sad face. While we were driving them to the airport my sister and I were chatting and reminiscing about the good old days and I was reminded of a funny story that would make a great blog post. 

Leslie and I have always been outgoing and social. Hilary on the other hand was always clingy, shy and wimpery and never wanted to let go of our mom's legs. So imagine my mom's surprise when Hilary went off to school and at the first parent-teacher conference and heard that shy little Hilary was actually out-going and even sometimes pesty to other kids! Who knew???

An additional sidenote: both of my sisters were/are the pickiest eaters on the planet. Leslie continues to be picky but Hilary thankfully has grown out of it and is now pretty adventurous. However, during childhood both of my sisters packed lunch Every. Single. Day. Because apparently school food = death.

Hilary's apparent transformation into social butterfly meant that she talked way more than she'd eat when she was at school. Every day when she'd come home from school dad would unpack her lunchbox and would find that she'd eaten less than half of what he'd packed her in the morning. So EVERY day he'd lecture her about eating her lunch and not wasting food. And EVERY day she'd bring home her damn lunchbox with half of the food still inside. Leslie and I would be like HELLO? Throw it away at school and stop bringing it home! But apparently that never occurred to our genius sister while at school. She was probably too busy chatting with friends to remember. When she would remember that dad would be mad she would try and dispose of the evidence but in her again genius-y way she would throw them in the kitchen trash where dad would see it or in her bedroom where it would be eventually found. And then she'd get yelled at again. Sigh. 

Well one day dad had apparently had enough. He was unpacking her lunchbox and discovered her uneaten peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Rather than launching into the same-old lecture he turns around and screeches "WHY WON'T YOU EAT YOUR SANDWICHES???" 

And then...

HE FLINGS THE SANDWICH AT HER.

Srsly. He whipped the sandwich from the lunchbox and into her shoulder where it landed with a soft thud. He was about 10 feet away and it was a PB&J so it wasn't like he was being abusive but she of course starts sobbing her face off and Leslie and I fall over dead with laughter. Of course our peals of laughter anger my dad who sends us to our room while he finishes his eat-your-lunch lecture with Hilary. 

It wasn't one of his best parenting moments, but it was certainly one of the most memorable. To this day we still re-enact the scenario complete with awesome sound effects. THWAP! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ahahahaha.

Weekend at Hilly's

Ange posted a quick little diddy over on her page, but here's my version:

A few months ago I was surfing the net and saw that Girlyman (Ange's favorite band ever) was playing in Ann Arbor, MI over Valentine's Day weekend. I did a little research and realized that Ann Arbor was a mere hour away from East Lansing where my sister lives (and is attending MSU Vet School). Hmm...I had a great idea! So I told Ange to request Valentine's Day weekend off and we were going to go visit my sister.

We got back from Africa and I asked her if she had requested the weekend off. She said I never made it clear that she should so then we had to do a last minute scramble to switch with someone. After she confirmed the switch I ordered the tickets for the show (still supposed to be a surprise). About 2 weeks before the trip Ange came up with a GREAT IDEA. She noticed that Girlyman was playing in Ann Arbor and she researched it and realized it was only an hour away from Hilary! Kill me. There goes my surprise. This was like the third surprise she'd ruined in a month so of course I was bummed...but we were still going to visit Hil & see Girlyman anyway!

Hilary, being the crazy-crazbo she is, decided that she wanted to get a Great Dane and happened to get one the week before we came. Long story short, the day before we came her dog and her roommate's dog decided to get in a fight over rawhide, both dogs were injured as well as her roommate, they left to get medical help for the more hurt dog (her roommate's) and her roommate. They stashed Diesel (Hilly's new dog) in the extra bedroom and when they got back home they found the 145 lb. 6 foot tall dog walking around on the roof. Lovely. Apparently he decided to rip down the blinds, open the window, tear out the screen and walk around on the roof (they have a tri-level so it has multiple roofs). How excited were we??? Ok, not so much.

Window damage

Giant dog

Anyway, we ended up having a very splendid time with the giant dog. We had an awesome time at the Girlyman concert (where YES, Ty did remember Ange BY NAME), laid around a ton by the fireplace (yay!), and realized that my sister and her roommate live like cave-people. Ange goes into more detail but basically, Hilary does not have a knife in the entirety of her house. Ange had to make us breakfast with a butter knife and a pizza cutter. Luckily we did some Goodwilling that weekend and were able to find a knife (still in packaging!) for $0.79. Yay, Hilary now has one knife! Believe me, she's got a lot further to go to become a more established adult ;)

All in all, a good weekend with my love and my baby sister!

Our little Veteran...I mean Veterinarian...

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while. I just kept forgetting to transfer the pics from my camera to my hard drive. So long overdue, but just as important this post is about moving Hilary to Michigan State University so she could go to school to become a veterinarian. I talked a little about Hilary's quest to become a veterinarian during her graduation post, but I think there are a few key things I did not mention.

1. Hilary had struggled with which vet school to attend. Yeah, which one. Because she got accepted into 3. Vet schools are notoriously hard to get accepted to, but dear Hilary got accepted to 3. I've got a smarty little sister. Her dream had always been to go to Purdue, but when she visited the schools, turns out she liked MSU better. It was a much more elaborate and semi-heart wrenching experience for her, but in the end that's what it came down to. So far she's very happy with her decision.

2. Hilary has always wanted to be a large animal vet. MSU has an excellent large animal vet program (actually large animals are called food animals but I don't like that so we'll stick to large animals) but they also have some cool exotic animal programs (like zoo animals and stuff) so she's thinking about that as well. This probably worked in her favor in terms of her competitiveness since the majority of students are females who want to do family/small pet vet stuff.

3. This actually has nothing to do with Hil's move to MSU directly, but once time, quite a while ago, my mom, sisters and I were walking through the mall during Veteran's Day and Leslie says "Speaking of Veterans...do you still want to be one?" and then quickly said "I mean, veterinarian." Which of course made us all crack up and also of course we have never let Leslie forget. So Hilary is off being a veteran at MSU. I mean, veterinarian.

When we went to move Hilary to school we also went by the Vet School to check it out. Only Leslie and my mom had been there to visit previously so it was my dad, Gail, Dale and my first time checking it out. I took charge of photo-documenting the trip.

As we pulled in we saw the first sign of excitement!

Ooooh, trucks and trailers! Must mean lots of big animals!

Yay! Animals! Look at the excitement! Home Alone style!

Big animal poop in the parking lot! Definitely in the right place!

Mom being a weirdo (which is normal). Hilary also being a weirdo...also normal.

Hilary and Dad posing awkwardly by a sick horse. Poses normal, sick horse was a new experience.

Insert lame joke about pegasus's and critical care as told by my father...king of corny jokes.

Here's Hilary posing as a Pegasus in front of the critical care center patron saint...or something.

Requisite posing in front of college sign.

Just in case you weren't sure what the Vet's Oath said. Very nice if I do say so myself.

Wooo! Public Health!!!

More awkward posing

Hilary had an awful pimple attacking her face. Like the wonderful and supportive older sister I am I told her it looked like she had a major herpes outbreak and I attempted to photo document it several times. This was the best shot of the bunch.

My mom was trying to give her support and be in solidarity with her.

True Story: I cut off my sister's finger...

On ACCIDENT of course. If you've ever hung out with my family and there are small children around you'll notice there are no slamming doors and if someone closes a door in some sort of "game" like play, they'll hear a chorus of voices lecturing that doors are not toys. This is all thanks to me and Hilary.

When Hilary was about 9 months old, my mom one day had ordered Leslie and I to clean up our room (we all shared a room when we lived in our little house in CA) because we have always been messy even when we were little. So Leslie and I were trying to clean while Hilary was doing her best to try and eat some crayons that were on the floor. I picked her up and put her down on the floor just outside the room and started to close the door so she couldn't get back in. As the door slid closed I heard the most awful shriek I have ever heard. I opened up the door to see blood gushing from her tiny little pinkie finger and a pool of blood forming on the ground. Of course my mom had come running and was shocked when she picked up her infant and went running to the kitchen to see the top of Hilary's finger dangling by just a small strip of skin. Apparently Hilary had reached her hand up to the door and put her hand on the lower hinge right at the moment I had closed it. Pinch-a-roo and the top of her finger was neatly lopped almost all the way off.

What happened next is very foggy in my memory. I remember a trail of blood down the hallway, crying hysterically as I kneeled on the floor of the car holding a dishrag to Hilary's finger shrieking "I CUT OFF HER FINGER!!!" while my mom trying to reassure me that I didn't cut off her finger while she drove wildly to my grandma's house (just around the block) to drop us off and pick up my uncle who accompanied her to the ER, and the long, long wait to find out if I'd really cut off my sister's finger for good.

When my parents finally returned to my grandma's house Hilary was exhausted and had a giant club hand that was wrapped up tightly with gauze and medical tape. After hours spent in the ER with a hand specialist & plastic surgeon they were able to run a metal rod down her pinkie finger and reattach the top of her finger with many tiny little stitches and now it was just a matter of waiting to see how her hand would heal. Since she was so little they weren't sure how it would go...would she lose all feeling in her finger, would she lose her fingernail permanently, would she be able to bend her finger appropriately...only time would tell.

I am happy to report that Hilary's finger healed nicely and you can barely tell that anything happened. If you look reallllllly closely you can see a little line all the way around her finger right near her first knuckle where the stitches went all the way around and although her fingernail is a little wonky you probably wouldn't notice unless you knew what had happened and looked at it closely. And Hilary also has the upside of permanently being able to hold it over my head that I cut off her finger, thereby trumping nearly anything she could possibly ever do to me.


Definitely not my best moment of childhood, but glad that it worked out ok for the finger in the end and that future generations of Briggs kids will know the dangers of closing doors.