tommy's baby books

you know how every person has a box of stuff at their house? stuff like old elementary school projects and school pictures and soccer medals and ninth grade awards for perfect attendance? well, on saturday, we got two giant packages in the mail from tommy's family. and they contained two huge binders, filled with every single item of memorabilia tommy has collected over his lifetime. tommy's amazing sister melissa has been in charge of consolidating each child's box of stuff into a book, ordered chronologically and with each piece of paper in its own individual page protector. these books are an AMAZING feat of organization and an adorable collection of things that tommy's mom saved over his lifetime. like this:

i know it's a blurry cell phone picture, but oh my gosh how cute.

we spent two and a half hours last night for family night going over each and every page of these books, admiring the cute pictures tommy drew two decades ago and reading the christmas cards tommy's parents wrote every year and the valentines his siblings gave him each valentine's day. 

there were several things that made us laugh so hard we cried, like the valentine his younger sister kristen wrote to him when she was probably six or seven: "sorry i was being mean to you earlier. i hope mom likes your valentine! love, kristen." or the other valentine from his little brother kurt when HE was around that age: "you're a good brother. maybe if you were better at tennis you could beat me. precious, kurt." or the paragraph in the letter that tommy wrote to his grandparents when he was around twelve: "The Halls, a family in our ward, adopted a baby from China. Kristen was talking about it with my mom today, because my mom didn't see the baby. Then Kristen asked if we could adopt a baby from China. As if my mom didn't have enough else to do." (hahahaha! i'm still laughing!) 

it was so fun for me to read through these books and get a little glimpse of what tommy was like before i met him. i remember when we were dating thinking that it was kind of weird yet really good that i hadn't known tommy in high school--that i didn't know what his high school persona was. not that it actually matters, but it's funny to talk about and know what people used to be like. well, tommy was basically just how you would have thought: 

• star student: no, really, he was his high school valedictorian and there were more awards in the high school portion of his book than i'd ever seen. also, he participated in tons of academic extracurriculars that i'd never even heard of. 
• cute brother: after his younger sister callie was born, tommy's mom said that tommy was the only one who could take care of her when she was in one of her "moods." 
• super nice guy: every girls choice dance, he was asked by about five girls, and two different times he went with girls with special needs who had massive crushes on him.

i loved looking through these books with him, although i did conclude that if i had known him in high school i would have totally been intimidated. (seriously! there were so many awards! for so many things!) but there you go. a big thank you to melissa for making and sending us those books!