My Family

To know me is to know my family, so I'll give you the backstory.

Twenty-four years ago, on a hot August day, my parents moved into NewYork City after having just graduated from BYU. My mother was six months pregnant with my older brother, and was starting a PhD program at Colombia in September. My Father was going to be working and taking classes at NYU to get his Masters in Accounting. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights  when it wasn't considered the safe place to live that it now is....

Six years later the most important figure in their lives joins the world.

ME! 

(I know, I'm tooting my own horn, but who cares?)

I was born in late July, and two years later my mother graduated, and took a job in the Bronx, leading us to move nine-blocks uptown, where we've been living ever since.

My childhood is one huge sorta mushed up bunch of very happy memories, with a few very prominent ones sticking out in my head.

My kind, stressed but ever patient mother, willing to hug me when I was throwing a temper-tantrum (I was a horrible child, I'll be honest.) because I was not allowed to have ANOTHER bowl of ice-cream two hours after bed time.

My dorky, nerdy (sorry dad), funny (and punny) book-loving, baseball-crazed, mustache clad father reading me book after book after book before bedtime, letting me get lost in another story so that my imagination would let my dreams take off in a whole other world.

My brother, who took my evil side more often than not, the subject of pranks, harsh words, and many a temper tantrum, and a secret jealousy that I still have, and still having the generosity to share his saturday morning cartoons (Pokèmon rocks!) and overly syrupy oatmeal with me.

But of course the biggest defining year of my childhood was between my eighth and ninth birthdays. In that year I changed schools, met the girl who I would end up becoming The Best of Friends with (and would still be friends with TEN YEARS later!), and welcomed my miracle of a sister into the world.

We like to say that the "Rubster" (as she will henceforth be named on this blog) was born old. She has a kinder heart than any child I have ever met, endless love and patience, intelligence and wisdom well beyond her years, and the ability to forgive her teenage sister faster than anyone else.

To say that my family is important to me, and have had a huge influence in my life would be an understatement.

So I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about this lovely family of mine, but don't worry, it won't all be this sappy "I wuuuuvvv you!" stuff. I promise.