In keeping with the title of this blog, I will periodically post some of the reasons I miss Mississippi, pretty much based on whatever is making me miss home on that particular day. Today, I miss my little sisters. My sister Hannah posted on my blog for the first time (Welcome, Hannah!) and left me a link to her blog site. And it was so much like a Web site I might have made that it was scary. Hannah, I think, is a lot like me when I was 17 but much, much cooler. My youngest sister, Audrey makes me laugh because she's so direct and so funny. She's a little like me, but again, cooler, and with more confidence and better hair. Both of my sisters are much better-looking than I was at their age, and as far as I can tell they never went through an awkward phase in their early teenage years. This is totally unfair, since my awkward early teenage phase lasted for about five years and consisted of being painfully thin, having stringy hair, braces, glasses, and a serious lack of physical coordination. I still don't have any physical coordination! So although I have many reasons to resent them for stealing all the good stuff from the gene pool, I love my sisters and I wish I saw them more. Here's to going home in two weeks.

So the dial-up connection here at my parents' house in Mississippi is too slow to upload pictures, but please stay tuned for some amazing Christmas photos taken by yours truly. Let's just say we all smell like fireworks smoke right now. Something to look forward to. May you be as happy as we are right now.
Love,
Haley

Blowing things up is a time-honored holiday tradition in Mississippi. This is my brother, Ryan, shooting fire from his hands. But not really. This was taken on Christmas night on the pier overlooking the lake on my parents' property at home. Ryan posed himself and lit several mortar style fireworks before I finally got the photo we wanted. Don't try this at home. We're thinking of marketing the video footage as a safety video demonstrating what NOT to do with fireworks. Enjoy:

A shot of the man who started all the pyromania in the family, my dad, at his happiest:

My dad and brothers. Three highly intelligent men.

Surprisingly, no one got hurt. And it was fun. Continue reading for more photos from our trip home.

Christmas morning with the family. Or, we should say, Christmas afternoon. We don't like to do anything on a deadline around our house, so it was around 1 p.m. before we opened gifts.

Kelly and I model the giant ribbons that came on the art prints my mom gave us both for Christmas. High fashion:

My dad and sisters:

Random photo of the newlyweds. Aaron has figured out the best way to transport his new wife. Very caveman.

The semi-annual poker game came down to Dan and Ryan on Monday night. Dan finally prevailed, but Ryan (and his super-cool sunglasses) held out for a long time.

My brother, Ryan, is headed for Marine Corps boot camp on January 2. In preparation for his transformation into a military man, my brother Aaron, already a Marine and deploying to Iraq in March, did the honors for Ryan's hair. Ryan has a bad habit of failing to get a haircut until the absolute last possible moment, and by the time he got the Ultimate Haircut, he had a good four inches of hair curling all over the place. We all gathered around on the porch to watch Aaron shave it off. Because we're supportive like that. And also it looked really, really funny. Here is how it all unfolded.

Let the haircut begin:

Halfway through, Aaron had to switch off his clippers and start taking the hair off in layers with his scissors. The result was that Ryan had a kind of Bozo the Clown look going.

And the final verdict is that he's probably stylish enough for the Marines. Good luck at basic training, Ryan.

From left: Audrey Rice, Hannah Rice, Aaron Rice, Kelly Rice, Ryan Rice, Haley Rice Wachdorf and Dan Wachdorf. In front, Avalanche the American Bulldog. Looking at this photo, you would never dream of all the trouble this group caused over Christmas. Keep reading if you dare.

I've said before that one of the things that I miss about living in the South is that so many of my friends are there, and although I can always pick up the phone and talk to them, it's not the same as being able to see them. Dan, my wonderful husband, knows this, and I think that's why he did a very special thing for me for my birthday. Over the almost two years since we moved to Albuquerque, I have managed to see each of my good friends when we've taken trips home or at events like weddings, but the one person I have not seen in almost two years is my friend, Liz. Liz was the maid of honor in our wedding. In fact, it was because of helping Liz move to College Station, Texas right after she and I graduated from college that I met Dan. But since April 2003, Liz and I have both moved, started new jobs, (she lives in Nashville now) and just generally been very, very busy. We talked about ways to get together several times, but it never worked out. Dan and I traveled a lot around the holidays to be at some important family events, but I told Dan that the very next thing I wanted to do was have Liz visit us in Albuquerque.
On my birthday, Dan gave me a few presents, but then started acting all weird and saying that another present of mine would be coming "on Friday." He made up some elaborate story about something he tried to get for me being on backorder, but I had my suspicions. My birthday was on Sunday, and by Thursday, I had relentlessly questioned Dan enough that he broke down and told me that Liz was coming in on a Friday night flight to spend the weekend with me. There should be video of the happy dance that was done in our kitchen, but since there isn't, suffice it to say that I was ecstatic. I went and got Liz from the airport on Friday night, and from then on, I think I got a total of 12 hours of sleep split between two nights, and I talked so much that I was going hoarse by the end of the weekend. It was just the most perfect birthday gift. So, here's to reuniting with old friends, and to Dan, the hands-down Greatest Husband Ever.

One of the great side effects of all the Grammy/Oscar buzz surrounding Jamie Foxx's performance in "Ray" is that suddenly, Ray Charles is so posthumously hip that VH1 has started playing "Georgia on My Mind" with a video of scenes from the movie in the morning. It's fantastic, even if it's somewhat disconcerting to go straight from "Georgia On My Mind," which is undoubtedly one of the finest songs recorded in the 20th century to, say, J-Lo's latest song/excuse to shake her stuff on TV. The downside of this brief outbreak of taste on the part of VH1 is that I get all choked up every time I hear that song, even though I'm not from Georgia. I don't cry during the national anthem or other patriotic songs, but "Georgia on My Mind" does me in. I'm not sure if that makes me a really bad American or a really good Southerner.
As a side note, I am completely at the mercy of the powers that be at VH1 and MTV right now, because BOTH of the CD players in our house are broken, and I basically only have control over music in my car. Something's gotta give.

Charles Randall Rice married Deborah Ann Lowry on May 5, 1973 at Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was 22 years old, and a recent graduate of the School of Forestry at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana. She was 20 years old and a student at the University of Southern Mississippi. They met on December 31, 1971, the night the year turned to 1972, on a blind date set up so that Dad would have a date to a dinner party he was supposed to attend. His date had stood him up at the last minute. Apparently, her fiancee' came to town unexpectedly. (In his defense, Daddy didn't know she was engaged, but I had to put that in, because you just can't make this stuff up.) Mom was supposed to work that night at the telephone company, but just as she got to work, her boss, the hostess of the dinner party Dad was threatening to back out of, told Mom she would give her New Year's Eve off of work if she would come to her house for a dinner party. Mom accepted her generous offer, and aren't we glad. By Thanksgiving, they were engaged.
Thirty-two years and five children later, I'd say it's pretty clear it was all meant to be.
This photo was taken in 1978, and it's one of my favorites of Mom and Dad. Isn't my mom a pretty lady? Isn't my dad handsome? And isn't his hair awfully long?

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Daddy. We love you so much and wish you many, many more years of your happy marriage.

My baby sister, Hannah Ruth Rice, nicknamed Hammer Roo in our family because the boys couldn't say her name when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital, graduates from high school this Saturday. In honor of that great occasion that I won't be able to attend, I wrote a letter that was read during her senior roast on Wednesday night at our family's church, Woodland PCA in Hattiesburg. They have a nice meal for the graduating seniors, then drag out every naked baby photo and embarassing story they can get from their families. I love this tradition, especially since I graduated a long time ago and now I have immunity. So in celebration of the big day tomorrow, here's that letter, as well as a photo of Hannah that I totally stole from her boyfriend's web site. Hopefully he doesn't sue me for stealing his work. Enjoy, and leave Hannah your congratulations in the comments section.

Dear Hannah,
You didn’t really think you were going to get out of this whole thing without hearing from me, did you? Silly girl. I’m really sorry I can’t be there to say all this in person, but you know I don’t easily pass up opportunities to embarrass my siblings.
I remember that when the boys graduated a few years ago, I felt kind of weird about it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Now that you’re graduating, I know exactly wht it’s weird. Because it makes me feel old. Very, very old. Older than I felt when the boys graduated. Their advent into the world is somewhat hazy in my mind, since I was only three years old. But I remember you. When you were little, I thought you were my baby as much as anyone else’s. Mom brought you into this world, and it’s thanks to her and dad that you’re a well-adjusted member of society, but there are an awful lot of photos of me hauling you around on my hip when you were a baby. And since we all know that shortly after Audrey’s debut in the family, she announced her exclusive rights to Mom’s attention with her first words, “MY mama,” you were even more at my mercy. This was unfortunate for you. I am pretty sure it’s my fault that in one of our family portraits you have stitches in your lower lip. The night before those photos were taken, I started playing a game with you in the pitch-black living room and got you all hyped up and then let you run around. It was kind of like letting go of one of those wind-up toy cars. You, predictably, whacked your face on the coffee table and started bleeding.
Come to think of it, that may not have been entirely my fault. Some of my more vivid memories of you as a kid have to do with you running into things. When we lived on East 16th Street in Yazoo City, our house had a split-level dining room and living room area, meaning that there was one stair step between the two rooms. Everyone else in the family figured out the whole thing about the step pretty quickly, but not you. We got used to the sound of you running full-speed across the dining room, failing to notice the step into the kitchen, and running into it with your shins. You always wiped out onto the kitchen floor and lay there for a minute, with this expression of shock on your face, like someone had come in at night and installed a step in the kitchen in an attempt to sabotage you.
Then there was the incident with the porch swing at the cabin. It was probably not the smartest thing for Aaron and Ryan and I to spend large chunks of time seeing how high we could make the porch swing go, but we did it without any bloodshed until one day when you walked out onto the porch, looked at the swing arching back and forth at the speed of a rocket, and then decided it would be a great idea to just, you know, WALK TOWARDS THE SWING. We couldn’t have stopped it at that point. Of course, when the swing caught you under the chin and sent you flying across the porch, the carnage was deemed to have been “All Our Our Fault For Not Watching Out For Our Baby Sister,” like we were just supposed to know that you were planning to take a lunge at the swing. I won’t even get into the time you jumped off the side of the pool and mananged to bust open both your face and Mom’s head. I don’t think you developed any depth perception until you were about ten. But, nonetheless, I’m sorry if you have any permanent scars.
When you got older, there was a protracted period of time when the boys and I were pretty mean to you, and I’m also sorry about that. In our defense, you were the world’s worst tattletale as a child. But I’m pretty sure that didn’t justify some of the things we did. I do like to think that the boys were worse than me. Bear in mind that it was the two of them who cut your hair off with safety scissors, not me, and I also didn’t make fun of your resulting short haircut. Still, I wasn’t always the greatest sister, and I’m sure you rejoiced when I went away to college. But one of my favorite things about our family now is that somewhere between the days when we used to beat each other up over who was going to sit in the front seat and now, when you’re 18 and headed off to college, we all became really good friends.
And you turned out to be a pretty cool person, much cooler than I am, even though I like to think I had something to do with the fact that you have good musical taste. You’re a good friend and you’re funny and you think about important things and you don’t really care too much what everybody else thinks about you, which is good, trust me. Also, you don’t run into furniture and walls nearly as much as you used to. I’m really proud that you’re my sister.
One of the things I told the boys at their roast was that they should always remember that family are the people who will always be there for you. That doesn’t mean nothing will change. We’ll come and go around the country and the world. We’ll get married and bring new people into the family, and we’ll be richer and laugh harder for it. But when bad things happen, and when you need to remember who you are and who loves you no matter what happens, you will go home. And even though I and the boys and Audrey won’t always be there in the house and you won’t either, you’ll learn that home and the people who are home to you will never be more than a phone call away. And when you need to know that, I hope you’ll call me. I love you. Congratulations on your graduation. Be careful, keep an eye out for all those stairs and watch your head.
Your big sister,
Haley

This is a little late in the day, but it's still May 31, so it's OK. Everyone please wish a very happy birthday to my baby-est sister Audrey, whose nickname, in case you're wondering, is AudgieMoPaudge, Queen of the Audgie Paudgies, or, if we don't have much time, "Moosie Baby." Both of those names were thought up by Dad, who has given all of us bizarre nicknames. Someday I'll do a whole entry just based on our family's various aliases. But in the meantime, wish Audrey a happy Sweet Sixteen. We love you, Audge!

As you may be able to figure out from the date information at the bottom of this post, it is 3:42 a.m. I am awake at this unholy hour because we have a plane to catch. Aside from the fact that I think the air travel industry is playing a sick joke on its customers by selling tickets for flights at this time in the morning, I am pretty excited. I don't want to give away where we're going, lest we be mobbed by the paparazzi, but it's between Louisiana and Alabama and we have some plans involving the family, a lot of food and, as always, some fireworks.
In other news, it's good to know that Backstreet Boys videos are on TV this early in the morning. You can get your awful music around the clock in this country. That must be why we celebrate Independence Day.

Here are a few photos that tell the story of our week at home. Dan and I got in on Saturday evening, and on Sunday, the whole family went to church together. We take up a whole pew now that there are two spouses to add to the mix! Here's a photo of the whole family, including Aaron and Ryan in their dress blues, looking very impressive:

Next up in the traditional activities was the celebration of Daddy's 55th birthday on July 4th and the Semi-Annual Rice Family Poker Invitational.

This year, we were joined by Audrey's boyfriend, Cade, and Hannah's boyfriend, Daniel. They played valiantly, but it became apparent early on that we were all about to get knocked out cold by the two most inexperienced players at the table: Hannah eventually won the tournament, which entitled her to the $40 prize. But first, Audrey, of all people, drew a series of incredible hands that she so did not deserve. We kept having to explain to her why her hand was better than ours. Here's a photo of Audrey at the height of her winning streak. But as was said previously, Hannah eventually prevailed, which means that Dan's two-year winning streak is over. Ha!

I also got to see Aaron walk on his new leg. Here's a photo of him showing off a little bit. Remember that movie, "The Karate Kid"? That's what this shot reminds me of.

On Tuesday, Aaron and Kelly had to head back to D.C. On Wednesday, Dan, Ryan, Hannah, Audrey and I decided to go bowling. First of all, I seem to have been away from the South for longer than I thought, because I was genuinely surprised at how many people were in the bowling alley at noon on a Wednesday. But the game was entertaining in its own right, especially when Hannah got up to bowl. Hannah does this great thing where she runs towards the line, then stops short, does this little hop, and then pretty much just drops the ball on the ground. It's astonishing how many pins she actually knocks down doing this, but mostly it's just hilarious to watch. This photo doesn't do it justice, but enjoy anyway:

Here's a bonus shot of Hannah and Audrey not letting the fierce competition get in the way of their friendship:

After bowling, we went out to eat at a wings place in Hattiesburg, where Dan and Ryan played some Pacman. Actually, Dan played Ms. Pacman. I think he has a crush on her:

At the end of the week, some of my dear friends from Belhaven days, Robin and Lindsay, came down to see us and brought their significant others. Lindsay has gotten engaged to Chris since the last time I was home, and Robin brought her friendboy Jeremy to meet all of us. Here are Robin and Jeremy. Everyone say "Awwww...."

Here's a shot of everyone chowing down on the amazing dinner my dad cooked for us. We considered going out to eat, but why would we do that when we can get such great food at home? Lindsay and Chris are at the far end of the table, Lindsay in the green shirt, (I know she's glad I took a photo of her eating) and Chris in the striped shirt, just so we're not confused about who is getting married. Lindsay is not marrying my husband. At least not as far as I've been informed.

We had champagne toasts to the soon-to-be-married couple and stayed up way too late talking. But who wants to sleep when you've got such important conversations to have?
Overall, a trip to see people worth celebrating. Here's to friends and family.

This is a photo of Avalanche, our family's American Bulldog. We got him in 1998 as a puppy and named him for his solid white color and resemblance to a natural disaster. The week before Dan and I came home to visit earlier this month, Av was diagnosed with cancer and had to be put to sleep. He was a happy, good-tempered dog, but he already had joint problems and other things that meant he was in a lot of pain a lot of the time as it was, and Mom and Dad didn't think it was right to let him suffer any more. It was the right thing to do, but it was a tough decision for them, I know.
I am not the animal lover in the family, since I am allergic to most things with fur. But I liked Av alright even though he was a dog, and he was definitely a source of amusement for our family. To the casual observer, he probably looked big and dangerous and aggressive, but the truth was that had there ever been any intruders on our property, Av would have been happy to follow them around and watch them steal all our worldly belongings as long as they would pet him and maybe feed him something he shouldn't have been eating. With no disrespect to the departed intended in this statement, he was not the smartest dog that ever lived. I can't count the number of mornings when I was living at home that he followed me when I left for work and then sat in front of my car, refusing to move in spite of my honking and flashing the lights at him. When he got like that, eventually you'd just have to get out of the car and shove him off the driveway. His great love in life was to chase the four wheeler that Dad uses on the land because he had a dangerous fascination with anything that had wheels. The result was that he was hit by at least two cars, maybe more. He never seemed to get seriously hurt, though.
His other great pastime was to try to get in the house, where he was strictly forbidden to enter because of his lack of interest in baths and his general bad manners. He knew good and well that he wasn't supposed to be in the house, but the minute you left the kitchen door cracked, he would butt the door open with his head and come on in, even though he was usually apprehended within seconds and forced back out onto the porch. A few times he managed to enter undetected, and on those occasions, he would head straight for the couch, which he seemed to think was his rightful property anyway. Once, when Mom and Dad left town to come and visit Dan and I in Albuquerque, Ryan was left with the responsibility of keeping an eye on Av. The led to Mom and Dad getting a phone call from Ryan asking "How do you get dog slobber out of couch cushions?"
Dad used to joke that when Dan came to ask Dad for my hand in marriage, he should have insisted that if Dan wanted to marry me, he would have to take "Haley's brother Av" off the family's hands, too, "as a dowry." But even though we used to joke about how generally worthless Av was and how the money that was spent to send him to obedience school might as well have been set on fire, it was really because we all loved that goofy dog as much for his faults as anything else.
The week before Av died, our cat of many years, Pounce, also died of a rare illness. It was a very weird coincedence, but in a way it was kind of appropriate. The two of them got along remarkably well for a cat and a dog. They shared Av's sleeping space at the top of the garage stairs in the winter when it was cold, and on warm days, you could find them both sprawled out in the sunlight on the deck within a few feet of each other. They were friends, and it would be sad to see one of them without the other. So now we're a petless family for the first time in probably 10 years. With almost everyone out of the house now, I don't think my parents will be getting any more animals, and that's OK. But it was a sad moment when we were cleaning food off of dinner plates one night when Dan and I were at home and realized that we were still setting aside all the scraps to take to a dog and cat that weren't there anymore. It's always hard to realize that something about home, even if it's a little thing, won't be the same any more.
We'll miss them.

My baby sister Hannah (or Hammer Roo) has a boyfriend who is currently living in the Boston-ish area studying photography. We like Daniel a lot, so recently we took a vote and decided to let Hannah go visit him up there. (I'm kidding, of course. Actually we flipped a coin.) Anyways, he just posted some pretty great photos of her on his website, which you can see here. They are all fantastic photos, because Daniel is very talented, but I'm partial to the ones of Hannah for obvious reasons. I will be filing these photos away under "Evidence That My Siblings Stole All the Genes for Good Looks/Life is Not Fair."

Said by my mom, on the first day of our trip home for Christmas, while she cranked the volume way the heck up on the television so she could better hear President George W. Bush address the nation on her news channel of choice, Fox News:

"Y'all be quiet, my homeboy is talking."

Of course then, she didn't get to hear the homeboy anyway because we were all laughing so hard we were in medical danger. I'm not sure what is more disturbing: that mom thinks W is her homeboy or that she has started using the word "homeboy" in casual conversation.
And that's just one thing that happened on the first day we were home. So stay tuned.

This takes a while to upload, but it's funny.

Yep, that's Ryan, me and Aaron in the swing in front of my parent's first house in Yazoo City. I would like to know why I'm apparently off to the races with my purse and knee socks and the boys are wearing pajamas. Maybe I was going to school. Or maybe I was just being prissy. It's hard to say.

Today is my mom and dad's 33rd wedding anniversary. Thirty-three years of marriage is quite an accomplishment, and I feel blessed to have parents who have loved each other for so long and who put so much love and work inito their marriage and their children. And trust me, we were a lot of work.
We love you, mom and dad. Happy anniversary.

Dan and I are currently at home in the great state of Mississippi, and yesterday we took a quick trip up to Jackson to see some friends. On our way there, I saw a lot of Jesus signs, and it made me wish I was faster with my camera so I could take a picture for the blog. One of the big things I miss about living in the South is the fact that Jesus signs are all over the sides of the highways and byways in Mississippi, usually either erected by a church or some well-meaning property owner who wants to give you something to think about while you drive. Every once in a while, my dad will call me from his truck, where he's driving through some tiny little town, to tell me about a new church sign he's seen, and I keep saying that someone should make a coffee table book of nothing but photos of these signs, because some of them are truly hilarious in their grotesqueness.
The sign I saw yesterday was hand-painted in gigantic lettering, and it displayed a lack of understanding of the fact that when you're writing something down, using capital letters is like yelling at your readers. It said: "Tell JESUS about it."
The subtext, I can only assume, was "Listen, I don't have time to hear about your problems. But I know who does."
I laughed for the next ten miles. Man, I miss living here.

Well, we're back from our trip to Mississippi, and right now we're spending a lot of time doing laundry and trying not to think too hard about the fact that we have to go to work tomorrow, but until I have time for a entry about the trip, I thought I would share a series of photos I took the last night we were in Mississippi. We were in the Stuckey's convenience store on Highway 49, a local meeting place in Hattiesburg, waiting for our friends Chris and Lindsay so we could go eat fried catfish in Moselle, Mississippi. (Really.) Stuckey's is not just a normal convenience store. It has a large display of extremely tacky knick knacks, ranging from glass angel figurines to bumper stickers to T-shirts. The idea appears to be that if you are getting gas and suddenly remember that it's your mom's birthday, you're covered. Anyway, since I had been giving a lot of thought to why there are so many references to Jesus everywhere you look in the South, and since we were in Stuckey's, the Hallmark of the South, I decided to try to see how many gifts I could find that mentioned Jesus in under five minutes and photograph them. Turns out, quite a few. Enjoy the photos, and please don't think I'm sacreligous, I just really find this stuff fascinating. Thankfully, I'm not the first person to notice all the Jesus signs, and even if I were, I don't think I could sum it up any more eloquently than Flannery O' Connor did when she said,
"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner who is not convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God." ~ Flannery O' Connor, "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction."

And that's why when you're in Stuckey's, you can buy all three of the following items:

I like how this one was displayed right along with the Elvis paraphrenalia.

I've been meaning to share these photos for a while. I took them back in April when I went home, when my sisters Audrey and Hannah and I spent a nice morning on the porch. Audrey was working, washing windows to help my mom get ready to host a bunch of Audrey's friends for dinner before prom. Hannah and I were just sitting around in our pajamas drinking coffee. The following photo is somewhat staged, but pretty accurately sums up what was going on:

Audrey was pretty upbeat about her slave labor status, especially considering that I kept taunting her with a camera.

I love my sisters.

One of the dubious side effects of living so far away from home is that I have not managed to see a single one of my siblings graduate from high school. I'm not proud of that, but the truth is that when you live across the country, you just can't come home for everything, not even all the really important things. So you do what you can and hope that your family believes you when you say you would be there in a heartbeat if you could.

One way I have found to participate in the graduations has been through the annual Senior Roast my family's church in Hattiesburg hosts. This is an evening dedicated to honoring the graduates with a nice meal, and then letting their families get up and show off their most embarrassing baby pictures on a projector screen while telling equally embarrassing childhood stories. It's a great tradition. And every year, since I can't attend, I write a letter to the sibling who is being roasted which is read aloud by my dad during the evening's festivities. Here is the letter I wrote for my baby sister Audrey.

First, here she is in her beautiful senior portrait, taken by our sister Hannah's insanely talented photographer boyfriend, Daniel Meigs. I like to think of this post as mine and Daniel's collaborative project, like if we were musicians and wrote a song together. Except that I would not be cool enough to be on Daniel's record label.

Dear Audrey,

Well, this clinches it. I am officially older than dirt if you’re graduating from high school. I’m sure that if I were there, you would tell me that I am, in fact, old. And then you would laugh in that way that you have always done because you are the baby of the family and you know you can get away with it. But you see, the joke is on you.

When Hannah’s roast came up a couple of years ago, I told her she was really in trouble, because while I only vaguely remember Ryan and Aaron’s early years, since they so closely coincided with my own, I was at least seven years old when she was born, and so had clear memories of her as a kid.

So here’s the bad news: By the time you arrived, I was nine-and-a-half years old and in full possession of my faculties. I could probably write a very detailed book about you. This is bad if you consider it embarrassing to have childhood stories told about you in public.

The good news is that it would be a danged funny book, and I would make lots of money, because from the moment you were born, you have been one of the most entertaining members of our very entertaining family.

When you were born, as I have mentioned, I was nine. This means that Aaron and Ryan were something like six years old, and Hannah couldn’t have been more than two and a half. We were a big group as it was, and we fell along pretty predictable battle lines. I was the oldest, and bossed everyone around in a completely insufferable manner. Aaron and Ryan functioned as a unit, sometimes friendly toward me, sometimes hostile, but always essentially a country unto themselves. All of us persecuted Hannah, who in turn got her revenge by tattling to Mom. Thus ran the drama of our daily lives, and while there was a lot of yelling and hair-pulling, everyone was basically happy with their job. So when you showed up, I think we were all at a loss as to what role you could possibly play in the family.

That’s why, for the first 18 months of your life, we treated you like an exotic pet. It helped that you were cute, with chubby cheeks and riotously curly hair, and that you allowed us to carry you around and dress you up. We were happy with the arrangement, because it required no real adjustment on our part, and you didn’t put up any kind of a fuss, so we thought you were happy too.

But all that changed one day, and when it did, the balance of power in the family changed forever.

On the fateful day in question, all us kids were sitting in the den of our house in Yazoo City, Mississippi, watching TV. Aaron and Ryan were sitting up close to the television in these little folding chairs we had, and you, too young to be very engaged by the program we were watching, were wandering around the room finding things to play with. Someone had recently given mom a gift of candy stuffed into one of those oversized coffee mugs. The candy was gone, but the mug was sitting on the windowsill, and you picked it up and started waddling around the room with it. It was a pretty heavy mug, at least a pound or so, and you were kind of leaned over from the exertion of trying to carry it. I mention the size and weight of the mug mainly to explain why Aaron thought he should take it away from you, but hang on to that piece of information, because it becomes important later.

Aaron took the mug from you and put it somewhere where he thought you couldn’t reach it and went back to watching television. You didn’t act upset about it, and you didn’t say anything, since you still weren’t talking very much, probably because you had the four of us trained to act as your personal footmen all the time, so why would you feel the need to communicate? At any rate, you didn’t really react at all when he took the mug away from you, which is what made what came next so startling.

You stood there a minute, first eyeing Aaron, and then the mug. Then you started waddling your little diapered butt back over to where the mug was. You got it in hand and turned to make your slow, burdened way back across the living room. None of us thought anything of it, least of all Aaron, who has his back turned to you. Eventually, you got back to your starting point, and walked right up behind Aaron.

What surprises me the most in retrospect is that even when you started raising the mug up over your head, none of us figured out what you were planning to do. And that’s how come we were all watching when you reared back and brought that solid ceramic mug down on the top of Aaron’s head with a horrible thud.

Given how loud Aaron screamed, you would expect a baby like yourself to be startled. You, however, were clearly prepared for this reaction, and remained totally unmoved as the predictable chaos ensued. Aaron cried, I started bossily telling you that we don’t hit people on the head with mugs, Hannah ran to tell Mom, and no doubt you were punished in some way. But you had made your point – “Don’t take my mug, people” – and had simultaneously told us just exactly what role you had planned out for yourself: The new boss. Or, as Dad took to calling you “Audgie Mo Paudge, Queen of the Audgie Paudgies.” In your version of the family drama, you were going to be the royalty, and we would play your humble servants.

Shortly after this, you started talking. It probably seemed like a strategic time to verbally assert your dominance. One of your first and most frequent pronouncements was to say “My mama” while mom was holding you. This was meant as a warning, telling the rest of us that if we thought for a single minute that we were going to manage to wrestle Mom’s undivided attention away from you, we were clearly delusional and perhaps we would like a nice mug to the back of the head. From then on, it was pretty clear that it was your world, and we were all just living in it.

So the family drama was altered. I still bossed everyone around, and Aaron and Ryan were still their own little nation, and Hannah was still relentlessly persecuted. But you were really the one in charge, and we knew it. I make it sound like you were spoiled, but really it wasn’t that, because you never took full advantage in the way you no doubt could have done. You just came into the world as a very confident person, and that’s something I think we all admired about you from the start. We still do.

I tell people all the time that I was so lucky to have four siblings, because nobody in the whole world can make me laugh like y’all can now that we’re done pulling each other’s hair and tattling. It’s been really fun in the last few years to get to know you as the exceedingly cool person that you are.

Still, you’re always going to be my baby sister. You’re graduating high school and I fully expect that you’re headed for new adventures that will be more fun than anything you’ve ever done. But I hope you will keep my number programmed into your cell phone, because when you get to the parts of life that are hard, I’ll always be happy to talk to you, any time, day or night. I am not the smartest person you know, but I am almost ten years old than you, and it turns out that when you’re an adult, being bossy is called “giving advice.” In a few years, you can make it up to me by giving my daughter advice when she doesn’t want to listen to me anymore. The two of you can talk about what a fossil I am, and I’m sure you’ll make her laugh. She’s going to think you’re the coolest person ever. I do.

I love you, Audgie.

Your big sister,

Haley

Last night, I talked to my sisters, Hannah and Audrey, to hear about Audrey's high school graduation which I was unable to attend. Hannah was telling me that after the graduation, the whole family went out for ice cream to celebrate. They went to Marble Slab, which has great ice cream, but which is always freezing cold inside, so they moved to a bench outside the store to eat the ice cream and talk over the graduation ceremony.

At some point there was a lull in the conversation and my mom said she was sad that everyone in the family, in terms of Rice siblings, was there except for me. Everyone agreed, probably mostly to humor me even in my absence, because I am still their big sister and they are afraid of me. Everyone, that is, except for my brother Ryan, who, according to Hannah, said "That's funny. I was actually just thinking it's a good thing she's not here, because we all barely fit on this bench."

Thanks, Rynie. I miss you, too. And believe me, if I were there, with my large pregnant self, not only would I make you stand up so I could sit on the bench, I would make you use your giant Marine muscles to go back in the store and get me more ice cream.

If the Rice family still sent out Christmas pictures, this would have to be the one we send out every year from now on, because this is the best group photo we've ever taken. Much better than, say, the year Mom dressed us all up in matching teddy bear sweatshirts for our Christmas card. But what, exactly, are we doing in this photo? I'm glad you asked.

Remember when Howard Dean sabotaged his presidential run by punching the air and screaming "Yaaaaa!" during that campaign speech? Well, somewhere along the way, my brother Ryan started doing that during everyday conversations. This caught on with the rest of the family, and reached epic proportions during Christmas, when someone was going "Yaaaa!" at least once an hour. So when we took a family photo during the Lowry family Christmas get-together, we did one normal photo, and then one Howard Dean photo. Yaaaa!

I love my family.

Dan just left to take my mom to the airport for her return flight to Mississippi. She came out and spent a week with us, and it was wonderful. But that makes today the day that I dread every time we visit family or they visit us. I have waved goodbye at the airport and from the driveway dozens of times over the last six years, and from doing that I have learned that I will feel better tomorrow, and a little better the day after that. But today, I know, is going to feel like leaving home all over again, and all my doubts about what we're doing here will loom as large as ever. Why do we live here? Seriously. Albuquerque. It's so far away from our families and the people who have known us all our lives. Why are we raising our child a jillion miles away from so many people who love her and would give anything to see her every day? How is Kate going to know our families when we can't see them more than a few times a year? Why can't the world be smaller? And when is this going to get easier?

The answers to those questions are as familiar as the back of my hand. We're here because God has provided work and a home for us here. After all, if God hadn't brought us both to New Mexico, we might never have gotten married, and we would miss out on all the blessings of our life together, including Kate, and I can't imagine my life in that case. Yes, this is far away, but we aren't alone by any means. We're blessed with wonderful friends and a church family who love us and love Kate and would do anything for us, and in the moments when I think wild thoughts of packing it all up and leaving here, I know that if that ever happens, I'll be heartbroken to leave those people behind. Kate is going to know our families the same way thousands of kids who don't live next door to their extended families do ... airplanes and telephones and webcams and all the things that really do make the world smaller than it would be if we had moved here in the days before mass transit and easy communication.

But that last question, the when is it going to get easier one, is a setup. I know now that the days when we leave or say goodbye yet again are never going to be easy. So today, just today, I'm going to feel a little sad. And I guess that's OK.

My sister Audrey, who is visiting us this week, was kind enough to bring me a picture of the aforementioned golden cow that you can see along Highway 49 South between Jackson and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. If I ever write a book, I think this will have to be the cover.