A Rose Among Thorns

So, if you’ve read many of our other posts, you may have noticed that there are a lot of boys in our family. 

Five in fact.

My dad used to call me the rose among the thorns because I was the only girl growing up with five brothers. When I was younger, I didn’t really enjoy that fact. I wanted a sister so badly and I cried every time my mom would come home and tell me she was pregnant with yet another boy. I’ve learned over the years that there were both pros and cons to being the only girl.

·              Pro - I never had to share a room with anyone. With six kids, there weren’t usually enough rooms to go around.

·              Pro - I never had to share my toys. Boys don’t tend to like babies and Barbie dolls.

·              Con - I’m pretty sure sometimes my toys were used for experiments… I had a few babies that somehow lost their heads.

·             Pro - In my teen years, no one ever wanted to borrow or play with my makeup. I’m now seeing with my daughter how I may not have enjoyed that so much.

·             Pro - I never had to share daddy-daughter dates. It was always just the two of us.

·            Con – The toilet seats were never down…

·            Con – There were always pirate adventures or hardy boy adventures, but not really any tea parties or save the princess games. Apparently a sister can’t be a princess.

·           Pro/Con – Everything always turns into a joke, from the actual jokes to the girl meltdowns. So the thickness of your skin really determines whether this one is a pro or a con.

   After growing up with only brothers, I married a man who also only has brothers. So at the end of it, I now have seven brothers, and I’m blessed in that I get along with all of them and have a good relationship with all of them in our own special way (even if that way involves a lot of sarcasm back and forth). And eventually...hopefully ...with all of those brothers come wives, or in my case, sisters!

So far, I now have three sisters,

 

 and hopefully one day I’ll have four more. **Side note, the sister on the right (my brother's wife) is the connection that brought the middle sister on the left together with my brother in law. And the far right sister in the left picture pretty much picked me out for my husband. **  Even though I didn’t grow up with them, or share a room with them, or have to fight with them over my makeup I am still very close with my sisters. I joke with one of them that God didn’t allow us to grow up as sisters because He knew that no parent could have handled us both, so he made us sisters by marriage instead. We even get asked when we go out together if we are sisters. I really ended up with the best of both worlds. I got to be the only girl and get spoiled growing up and I’ll still get to have a bunch of sisters before it’s all said and done. God sure knows what He’s doing, doesn’t He?