yes, this is my family

my older brother ben is coming to see me this weekend. the unique thing is that he is not coming by car or airplane, ben is sailing to nyc from Florida. as i write this he is in the middle of the ocean, probably surrounded by dolphins, and out of reach of the world.
yup, this is my family in a nutshell.

my parents raised my two siblings and i without fears of taking on crazy adventures. even when we were little they would let me bike miles away from home, without a helmet...just as long as i called when i arrived. as we got older the adventures became more extreme. ben solo hiked the Appalachian trail and then built a raft and rafted down the Mississippi river (the press loved that one...a modern day tom sawyer). then my family went to Israel for awhile. my dad had us going to the craziest places when we were there...no other tourists in sight.

at the end of college i decided to take a trip of my own. i went to Guatemala, without being able to speak a word of spanish. i co-led a backpacking trips in the wilderness to raise money for Guatemalan orphans. at the end i tooled around the country alone...it was beautiful!

but of course my family keeps going bigger and better. my brother became a captain of a sailboat and lived in the caribbean for a while; as i moved to NYC to work with kids in the inner-city. my parents are loving all the stories we tell!

which is why when my mom heard of 67 days of smiles on the Today Show she called me immediately...she knows me better then anyone. and she knows Kyle extremely well too. yesterday she called to see how our audition video was going...she is super excited for the possibility of another crazy adventure in store for one of her kids.

i love my family. i love that they encourage us to live our lives to the full...as my dad says 'what's life if you don't live it on the edge"...oh and he's a pastor :)