Losing a brother or gaining a sister?

I’ve known my oldest brother Craig for 21 years. Over these years he’s changed. The earliest Craig that I remember used to organize his brothers and sister into lego building teams. (Side note: I LOVED LEGO SOOOO MUCH. Wish I still did!) He and my brother Dan used to get the blue and green pieces, leaving the yellow and red for my sister Michelle and I. The blue and the green were the cool colors. He used to build cars out of “pipe works,” which he would push the younger ones down the street in. I promise we reached speeds of 10-15 mph. Tree forts, wrestling in the front yard, capture the flag, freeze tag, and blind man’s bluff made up some of the greatest memories that I have of Craig, and of my childhood. That Craig I remember didn’t get lost over the years, but sometimes he’s hard to find.

After Craig found a good job(setting up tents), when he was 16 years old, he kind of started growing away from the family. His new job brought new friends and new priorities into his life. This isn’t a sad thing, because this is the way life works sometimes. Anyways…our family eventually moved down to Virginia, we had been living in New Jersey, Craig decided to stay in NJ and ended up growing even further away from the family.
After about a year or so of our family living in different states Craig moved down south! He hesitated at first, but he eventually grew right back into the swing of things with the family. This growing back together consisted of movie summer night parties with lots of family and friends and larger than life paintball battles. Putting it very literally, Craig (with the help of some of his brothers) pretty much created an amateur paintball league. Some Saturday mornings we’d have close to thirty people out there in that field in west Midlothian.

Around time of rejoining with the family, Craig started dating his fiancée, Caitlin.















I had been casual friends with Caitlin for a few years before her and my brother started dating, but not like great friends.

I realize this is really long for a blog….so….. pretty much now that Craig and Caitlin are engaged to be married I’ve grown very close to both. I basically have grown back together with Craig as a brother while growing closer with Caitlin as a sister. I’m very happy to have both back in my life and look forward to establishing the next generation of our family!

So instead of wondering whether or not I’m losing a brother or gaining a sister?....why can’t I be gaining both?