My One and Only

Brother. Ohhhhhhh, brother.

On March 22, 1986, a child was born to ruin my single child family.

In case you don't know Kegan, I should tell you a few things. Once you know these things, you may know him better than at least 100 of his friends on Facebook. In fact, after you read this, you should definitely add him on Facebook, since you will feel such an intimate kinship with him. And being friends on Facebook requires that, you know.

1. Kegan prefers the "wide eyed" pose in all pictures. You basically can't get a picture of him with normal eyes, except when he was an emo for Halloween. Oddly enough, he developed regular eye for that costume. That being said, he does often walk around with normal eyes. Well... Normal eyes for him.

2. Kegan has WIDE EYES. Huge eyes. HuMANGous eyes. People constantly remarked on them when he was a child. Japanese relatives or friends would draw little caricatures of him and they would always be half the size of his face. The fact that Japanese people always wanted to draw him should tell you how big his eyes are. I was often jealous of how cute everyone thought he was. I was the ugly child after Kegan was born.

3. Kegan is extremely social. If being social could be a job, he would have it. He is friends with everyone and is constantly talking, texting, chatting on-line, or doing all three at once (much to my chagrin). He was a prince for one of those high school dance royal court things and seemed to always have a girlfriend and maybe one or two in the wings waiting for their chance. He's not a player or anything, just genuinely interested in people and having relationships with them.

4. On that same note, if you knew what he did when he hung out with his friends, you would be surprised that he was one of the popular kids. When he was really young, I was sure he was going to be SUPER nerdy, and even worried about it. This is because he played huge computer game network parties with his friends all the time. I would roll my eyes when friends would show up at the door with computers in hand and they'd spend all day and night in the computer room playing warcraft or similar games. Around 2 am when I would get home I'd go in there and tell them to shut up and go to bed.

Kegan also was a teacher's pet and even went to go help out his elementary school teachers during Christmas Break in their classrooms. He watched star trek (so I did too, so what?) and read the Red Wall series. I guess I turned out to be the nerdy one.

5. My parents adore Kegan and I was always jealous of how he had so many more privileges than I did as a kid. I remember once when I was 13 I was grounded for the entire summer because I went to a PG-13 movie (accompanied by friend's parents--- the movie was "Last Action Hero"). When Kegan was 13, he was given permission to go to rated R movies when it was a friend's dad who took them to the movie.

When I started getting into cooking in college I came home and tried to cook and was nixed pretty often. But my mom was always trying to get Kegan to cook and would brag about his banana pancakes (made from a recipe she had printed out). And guys. I make a mean banana pancake.

Oh, and I'm not even going to get into him having a nicer car than me.

6. Kegan can eat, eat, eat fattening food and is really wiry. He also never finishes his plate. Kegan is a good model for how your eating habits as a child follow you into adulthood. He's gotten less picky, but he is the only person I know who buys fast food and then walks away from it before it's done. Sometimes it's not even HALF done. He'll buy a dozen krispy kremes and only eat 6 of them.

7. He is very interested politics and actually reads political books and articles. Since he's one of the few moderate liberals at Provo he gets a lot of flack for it. But he stays strong. We were a little worried for a while when he was younger, but he mended his previous like of GWB. He even writes about politics sometimes on his blog.

8. Kegan is engaged (her picture is above). Many times after I got married he asked me about being married and seemed jealous of that connection I had. I'd say he's a very loving person. Even when he was little he would come home and give my mom a kiss and say he loved her. No, I do not think this has anything to do with him being the favorite child. I mean, I came home and went straight up to my room. Nothing more loving than that. But back to the engaged part. Kegan is getting married to Amanda Aagard (who actually is from Wilsonville) and because she is a great writer and an English major, I approve.

9. Kegan has a lot of talent and interests. He plays the guitar and sax (never practiced but was still a star player in high school band), ran cross country (following in my footsteps, of course), cooks, reads, speaks Japanese very well, takes 25 minute long showers, and is always well dressed (see above).

10. When I was younger I would go crazy with how often Kegan would imitate me. If I got a bowl of cereal, he would get a bowl of cereal. If I was going to a friend's house, he would come with me.

11. Kegan loves to sleep. He can sleep in until 1 pm. Since my dad used to come in and wake me around 8 am on Saturday mornings, I was appalled at how late Kegan would sleep in when I would come home from college in the summer. I will say he was a wimp about sleeping anywhere other than bed. When we slept out on the trampoline he would always end up going into the house eventually, especially if it started raining. If we were sleeping in our fort of blankets and the piggy bank holding one of the corners to the dresser fell down on his head, he would immediately retreat to his bedroom. What a wimp.

Happy Birthday Bro. Love you.