By their ecstatic reaction when we told the kids that they could sleep on the hide-a-bed on Friday night, you’d have thought that we’d just announced that we were taking them on an all-expense-paid trip to the American Girl store or something.  The cutest thing was when they exclaimed, “Oh! The HEIDI bed! We slept there with Aunt Heidi when she came to visit!” 

And so this is how the hide-a-bed came to be affectionately known as the “Heidi Bed” in the Tolbert household.

As my two youngest kids gasped and wheezed through RSV-infected lungs Saturday night, I wished that I could breathe for them.  As any mother would, I longed to take away the pain and discomfort of my little children.  

And then my thoughts were turned to Someone who undoubtedly knew exactly how I felt . . . who loved ME enough to suffer unexplicable pain on my behalf. And as this thought came to my mind, peace came to my heart, and I was comforted to know that even in the dark of that frightening night, I was not alone.

Ever since my brother David and his amazing wife Andee visited us for Thanksgiving, our home hasn’t been the same.  And not just because David pretty much spent his entire vacation fixing stuff around our house . . . Stuff like stopping and preventing leaks by tightening the pipes under EVERY sink, replacing the tank fill valves on all of our toilets and the bubble-thingie in the upstairs toilet, sealing the granite in our kitchen, hanging curtains in the girls’ room, installing a new ceiling fan in the girls’ room, replacing the fan blades and bulbs on the ceiling fan in the family room, trimming the trees in the girls’ secret backyard hideout, changing the brakes on BT’s truck, replacing the belts on my Mazda, installing a timer and replacing the light sockets on the front architectural lights, installing a motion-sensor floodlight by the back door, fixing the bottom drawer in the refrigerator, helping me sell spare tools on Craigslist . . . and I’m SURE that I’ve left something off the list.

No.  David’s legacy is more than that.  Whenever something breaks or we can’t figure out how to do something around here, more than one of us is prone to utter, “If Uncle David were here, he’d know how to fix this.”

And yet this is the brother who used to set my alarm clock to go off in the middle of the night . . . and would close the AC/heat vent to my room so that he’d get all the cool/warm air . . . and would put his false teeth by MY plate at the dinner table.

I miss David and Andee.  And not just because our toilets now flush properly and our sinks don’t leak.  I miss them, and all my siblings and their spouses, because we have so much fun when we are together.  BEAR LAKE July 2009 or BUST!!!  Be there.