Remembering

I sit here tonight all alone with thoughts running through my head. This is always a hard day for me and my family, and yet a day to be thankful for the knowledge that we will live again someday. This day most of all, I am thankful for the knowledge that my family can be together forever. I am thankful that I will one day be able to see my brother again. That we will laugh and talk and that he will have a good and perfect body. I am thankful everyday that I have a sweet little boy that resembles him.....curls and all. And I am thankful to have a boy that bears his name. I hope that, through me, my children will know and love their Uncle Aaron. So tonight, here are some of my favorite memories and things about Aaron. :)

His generous nature! We called him Uncle Warbucks!! When Weston was little and we were so poor and in college, Aaron was always more than happy to give of his money to help his first little nephew out.

He was the master fisherman!! Now I am pretty sure that Steven fought for that title with Aaron, but Aaron always won out! He could catch anything and everything with his little snoopy fishing pole. And he could catch it on practically anything too!

I can never here the phrase, "You never know....." without thinking of Aaron. Boy was he ever the stubborn red head.....but in a good way most of the time. :)

Whenever I head Garth Brooks playing, I think of him, singing along. Any time that Shameless played at the stake dances, Aaron and I would find each other and dance---all the while singing, "I'm shavin'!!" I swear that is what it sounds like he is saying!

I can still see Aaron now, rolling his eyes and giving me that fake exasperated smile, because he hated that I always wanted to be on time, or as he saw it, early to band practice. He loved to tease me about that to no end!

He loved to jump out and scare us all the time......Momma especially! And we would fall for it every time. He loved to hide and jump out and scare us! :)

I can still see him and Allison playing and swimming at the pool! They were quite the pair! And I can still hear them singing, "Picnic time for teddy bears" and singing the words all wrong. They thought that they were in their underwear instead of being unawares!!!! So, to this day, when that same song plays on the cd in our car, all my kids know to sing underwear in place of the real words!!!!

His dogged determination was, and always will be, an example to me. He never gave up. Never! Even as he was in his last hours, he kept talking about what he was going to do when he got better. I think that he had more stick-to-it-ness in his little finger than I have in my entire being! Just thinking about it makes me want to try harder and harder to be more like him.

I think that my most embarrassing moment that Aaron was a part of would have to have been the summer that I really liked a certain lifeguard at our pool. When he started not paying as much attention as I would like, I decided that playing hard to get was the tactic of choice. It worked. But I can still remember how mortified I was when Aaron came up to me at the pool when I was swimming with this lifeguard and announced, "I thought you were playing hard to get!!" I was soooooo embarrassed!!! Oh well......what are brothers for, right?!! :D

I really could go on and on. I have so many good memories. I am thankful for all the many things that I learned from Aaron. I know that I miss seeing and talking to him, but it won't be forever. And until I meet him again, I choose to think that in between his busy times of teaching those spirits that have gone ahead of us the gospel of Jesus Christ, he is always close by, watching over me and my family. He is our own personal guardian angel. And I will always love him......