TEXAS TRIP: DALLAS CUTIES

Dallas was the first stop, where one of my many sisters (we are five sisters, one brother for siblings) lives with her husband and two daughters.  I got to their house around five thirty Weds evening, we all had dinner and i stayed up as long as i could, but that was the night i slept for something like 14 hours.  this is the next day, the two girls in a pretty usual formation:  the older one is 13, and the darling of my life since the moment she was born.  G and i spent the night in Baylor Hospital, sometimes in the birthing room, sometimes in the waiting room (i found the birthing room difficult, i was terrified my sister and the baby both were going to die, that monitor scared me to death.  having gone thru it twice herself, G was a lot less anxious).  but when N finally arrived on the scene, with her little screwed up face and crooked head, she became the most important person in my life, in her own special way.  the younger girl (she's seven now) arrived in our family and our hearts two and a half years ago.  my sister was supposed to fly to China on Sept. 12, 2001.  needless to say, she didn't.  but she flew out on the first plane to China out of DFW Airport, a few days later.  G and i went to Dallas to meet our new niece that Christmas, and she immediately became one of the most important people in our lives.  we have a lot of them. 

My sister and her husband were both too old to consider having another child (we're all old in my family now), and another sister had adopted a child from China as an infant, whom we all adore.  here they wanted an older girl, to be a companion and sister right away for N.  N is very much the Big Sister now, after a rocky introductory period, and is beginning to move into her cynical teenage phase, as perhaps you can tell in this photo.  both these kids have fabulous senses of humor, actually fairly sophisticated senses of humor for their ages. LL, the little one, is a ray of delight and sunshine.  everything pleases her, she is affectionate and loving with everyone, has learned English in warp-speed time, and is doing well in school.

Here's LL on the front porch, a Texas summer day.  can't you just feel the joy radiating out of this kid?  she'd make you come in off the ledge without jumping, just to watch her smile.

That afternoon N and i and a friend of mine (my longest-time dearest-in-all-the-world friend) went to see Harry Potter 3, the Prisoner of Azkaban.  it was N's third time to see it, and we all loved it enormously.  i think it is definitely the best of the three movies about Harry. 

more to come - i've only started!  can you stand it?