Kevin has always been my closest sibling. He is two and a half years younger than I, and comprised one half of the "little boys", as he and Kristopher were affectionately dubbed. I remember him as a barefoot little guy, long skinny legs and a belly we loved to tease him about. He was always smiling, always being funny, and pretty much the life of any party we were having as kids.

I remember playing dress up with him. Kellie and I wore long "hoop skirts" and bonnets left from Mom's teaching days and school play costumes she had made. We put dresses on Kevin and declared him to be the cutest girl we'd ever seen. When Dad found out about it, he was pretty upset and told us to never dress him as a girl again.


Kevin has loved machines from the minute he was old enough to toddle around and investigate them. He got his own bicycle at age four and could ride it without training wheels down our thick-sand roads. At about seven he loved running the tiller in Mom's garden. He also worked on sewing a quilt for quite awhile, simply because it allowed him to run yet another machine! At about age eleven, he took over the pivot irrigation on Dad's ranch and basically ran it himself, with a little help here and there. He knew how to drive a pickup to haul fuel for the pivots, change out motors that had gone bad, and everything else that was involved in their repair and maintenance.

Kevin liked ranch work and was a good hand with his favorite horse, Gunner. But it was never about work, for Kevin. He was always goofing off and being silly, making Gunner attack our horses on command--the dun gelding would actually dive at our horse's heads with his ears pinned back and teeth bared when Kevin said, "Git 'im, Gunner!" It would make our horses shy back and run, to Kevin's delight. He also had Gunner trained to play horseback "bumper cars"...which was frightening also because Gunner would kick without warning. But it was all in good fun.

One of Kevin's best talents is singing. We all grew up singing together, but in about tenth grade, his voice got really good and we had so much fun singing in groups together. Kellie often brought home a new song for us to learn on her college breaks, and the four of us (Kellie, Kevin, Kris, and myself) would sing four part acapella songs that were a challenge and really fun to sing. At my wedding, I asked Kevin to sing "God Bless the Broken Road", a Rascal Flatts song that is so pretty. It's still one of my favorite songs.

Kevin and I got really close while we were in college together. I had not had a car of my own up to that point, and Dad bought an old Buick for us to share. We worked for a cleaning company and would do most jobs together, cleaning business offices after hours and vacant apartments and such. I enjoyed cleaning and Kevin enjoyed keeping the atmosphere light, so we were a good team. He continued to work for Dad a year or so after college, and when I changed jobs, we ended up rooming together for awhile. I'm glad we got to share those years together, before marrying and moving apart. Of all the siblings, we probably know each other the best.

He's still pretty goofy, even after marrying the girl of his dreams and having a son now and all. There are so many silly stories I could tell, but I'll save them for later posts and hope I never forget them. Each one of these threads is the bond of our family, and I hope to have a beautiful tapestry of memories to look back on someday.