Happy Birthday Bubba!!

My big brother turns 27 today.

TWENTY SEVEN!!!??!!

How did this happen?  It seems like it was only yesterday that he looked like this...

(That's him there, with the ridiculously adorable blond hair.  I'm the ugly baby he's holding.  I'm self-aware.  I recognize that I wasn't a pretty baby.  It's okay.)

Well, I don't ACTUALLY remember him looking like this because I was too young to know what was going on at that point.  So really, it seems like yesterday that he looked like this...

But wait a minute.  He looks pretty darn angelic in this picture, and from what I remember, he spent every waking minute terrorizing me.  So REALLY, it seems like yesterday that he looked like this...

Now that's more like it. He's terrorizing me, and I'm crying.  Sounds about right.

So he's twenty-seven.  Which makes today my half-birthday, as he reminded me on the phone this morning, since we were born exactly two and a half years apart.

There are a billion things I love about my brother.  

He always tells the best stories - the kind of stories that couldn't possibly be true, except that they are.  Which is usually pretty troubling.  

He says what he means.  You don't ever have to wonder what he's thinking because, for better or worse, he'll tell you.  

He confesses.  When he does something wrong, he owns up to it.  In fact, he can't sleep at night unless he does.  He's been like this since he was a little boy.

He's tenderhearted.  He seems tough, but his little heart can't take it when someone he cares about is upset with him.  When we'd fight as kids, he'd run to my room about thirty seconds after he made me cry and ask me to forgive him.  If I really wanted to make him mad, I'd tell him no, and he'd get mad all over again. 

He married one of my best friends.  The kid's got good taste.

(Someone got out some red lipstick, and it was all downhill from there.)

He's a farmer.  If you had told me five years ago that my brother would come home from the Navy and help run my Papaw's farming business, I'd have laughed in your face.  Yet, he came home and did exactly that.  I'm so proud of him for figuring out what he wanted out of life.  Although I guess his career choices were sort of foreshadowed early on in life.

(Here he is as a soldier.  I'm a... princess?  Covered in blue eyeshadow and calomine lotion??)

(I think he's TECHNICALLY supposed to be Indiana Jones here.  But he does look like a farmer.  With a gun.  I'm obviously Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz - minus the blue gingham dress.)

So anyway... I love my brother, and I hope he has a WONDERFUL twenty-seventh birthday.  And, just for good measure, I'm going to throw in an extra picture or two. :)