You don’t get to pick your family:  It pretty much goes without saying that my wife is AWESOME, and anyone that talks to her can tell right away, so when I was set to meet her family for the first time at her sister’s wedding I wasn’t sure what to expect.  She is the oldest of 4, and I’d heard some pretty funny/weird stories about them over the 6 months that we had been dating.  Not to mention that I would be meeting her Father and long time family friends as well, it was a lot of pressure.

Luckily her baby brother lives near us and I had already become pretty comfortable with him, and I hoped that he had put in a good word for me ahead of time.  And as it turned out everything was fine, and over the years I’ve become pretty fond of that rag-tag group of in-laws.

The gift of gifts:  Last summer my brother in-law was moving and he called and said that he had something for our son that he wanted to drop off.  He is really thoughtful and always thrifting so I figured it was some cool little thing he found, but I was totally blown away when he walked in with the tubs in the pictures above.  He told us that he wanted us to have his childhood collection of Legos, and it was quite a collection!  In addition to standard building sets he also had tons of knights and pirate sets complete with huge arsenals and specialized blocks for building castles.

Of course our son was 6 months at the time so we have not gotten a chance to play with them, but I’m really looking forward to it!  ..and it makes up for all the times my brother in-law called me in the middle of the night to jump start his car or “show him” how to change a tire.