Happy birthday to the oldest of the Lange Gang!

It is my oldest brother Mikes birthday.
Let me first describe the pictures; the first is of Mike in his rock band stage(he is the singer in the background) He was blessed with every talent imaginable; singing, playing the piano, sax, trumpet, writing music, artistic and much much more. My brother Mike and Bret had so many trophies, sometimes taking 1st 2nd and 3rd in the same competition.
In this picture you can sort of see his hair.... I remember my brother begging my mom to give him a perm, they were the "in" for boys that age. Anyway that is how I remember him in his high school days.
The second picture is him as a referee at a powder puff game. He looks official doesn't' he, especially with his short shorts!!
I am thankful for my brother Mike. I am sure being the oldest of 7 kids must have been difficult. But he set a great example and is still setting the example in raising a wonderful family.
The fondest memory I have of my brother was just this past year. I watched as my brother came to my dieing mom's bedside. Right away he kissed her forehead and cheek and knelt down beside her. He held her hand, smoothed the hair off her forehead and even wiped the blood from her nose. I was a mess, but my brother just knelt beside her to pray. I will never forget how strong he looked as he told my mom that it was ok to go. I know some may think that is a weird favorite memory, but it touched my heart forever. Thank you for being my big brother, I love you Mike!!!

Goodbye sweet Lynn!

Today started out pretty good, the kids were ready on time and I had showered before noon! Yeah! I decided to drive Samuel to the bus stop and then head off to do my errands. As I was putting the baby in the car Timothy runs in the garage from playing in the snow. Immediately he starts to climb over the baby getting her and everything else wet. Right away I start to chew him out for not getting in the car when I told him to. If you know my kids they like to talk(just like me:) so as I am chewing him out he keeps trying to interrupt me by saying "but mom" over and over. After we are settled in the car and I start to back up I finally ask Timothy what he wanted to tell me. This is what he said...."Mom is that bird dead?" . "What bird, I don't see a dead bird. The only birds I see are flying around. " Again he asks, so to get him to be quiet I just tell him that it is probably playing dead. I had already fed the birds earlier and knew they weren't around trying to get in our garage. So I proceed to back out and feel a bump. Weird. I thought that Guy cleared all the big snow chunks off the driveway. I didn't think anything more until I come home and pull in the driveway. AAAGGGGHHHHHH!!! We have neighborhood pigeons that we have been feeding for years. Most of our neighbors don't like them because they poop on their houses and cars...not us. I tell them if you feed them they respect you. We have loved these birds so much that we buy 25lbs of bird feed at a time and have named all three of them. Last year one of the birds went missing and Mitchial cried for days thinking that our neighbor shot it (I won't name names Chris:). I finally convinced him that it flew somewhere else. So anyway I am pulling in to our house and see Lynn squashed!!! Lucky for me the snow was covering most of the crime scene. I immediately backed out and drove to our friends house crying that I killed our bird. I pleaded to my friend that her husband had to go over and scoop up the remains before my kids see. Lucky for me I have great neighbors! So I wait in the car and decide to call Guy and let him know the bad news. Of course by time he answers I am crying so hard and telling him that there has been a accident and someone died. I was trying to talk in code so Timothy wouldn't hear that I squashed Lynn. Meanwhile Guy is only hearing a few words like accident and die so he begins to panic. After explaining to him that it was Lynn and we were fine he said, "that's it, the bird" . This brought on more tears until he explained that he was upset at our loss but glad that it wasn't a human that died.
It still made me mad that he wasn't more concerned until he told me that he was in a meeting and everyone was hearing our conversation and that we should talk later. Great now everyone at Guys work knows I am a killer.
After I get off the phone "Kevin" comes to tell me he did the best he could. There was some remaining evidence on the driveway but he assured me he stomped snow down on it so you couldn't see the coloring. :( I slowly drove home and Timothy immediately tells me "Mom the bird was playing dead because it is gone now". I couldn't even talk I was so sick to my stomach. Later I find out that the bird was dead before I ran over it. Not that it would have made me less sad but I wouldn't have been praying for forgiveness for murdering our pet.