Mes Belles Lettres

Here it is, the last family birthday tribute of the year. Today is my brother Tyler's birthday. Tyler is the biggest dummy I know. Okay, I had to say that or Tyler would read this whole thing and think I don't love him. So Tyler is a mere fourteen months younger than me. When we were little he used to think he was older than me, nobody knows why, probably because he is crazy. He eventually realized he was younger, but it was too late, by then he was much taller than me and loved to pretend he couldn't see me at all when looking straight forward because I was so short. So growing up Tyler and I were always really close. We have a pretty similar sense of humor so we'd always be laughing really hard at things for a really long time, until Tyler got dumb and we fought for awhile. One thing about Tyler is that he can't play games. He is really competitive (like most of us Reynolds) but when he was younger he wouldn't take losing very well so he was banned fr...

So I gave you a couple days respite because day three was super long to read, and quite frankly, I knew we were all taking time off to spend Christmas with our families. My Christmas was most excellent and I hope yours was too. So, the last day of New York: Saturday morning we woke up and packed to check out of our hostel and then we headed over to the LDS temple. The interesting thing about the New York temple is that it has a meeting house above it. I thought it might be kind of weird to go to church in a building like that, especially above a temple, but after we were in the temple doing various things (I did baptisms) I went up there to change into street clothes and once I got off the elevator at the third floor, it was just like being in any other church building on a Sunday. After changing we decided to head over the Central Park to walk around and find a place to eat, because we were starving. I was in the temple for a LONG time. Kathy had done a two hour session and by t...

ADDENDUM: I forgot to tell you about my subway boyfriend on our first day in New York. At some point on Thursday we were on the subway when this guy hopped on with his electric guitar and his amp and started playing a song for all of us. Now as is typical in the subway there were several musicians at different stops, but this was the first guy that actually got onto a train, with an amp. It was loud, and, not very good. Afterward he wandered about asking for money. I had no cash, but when he got to me he said, "you're very beautiful." "Thank you." I responded. "Will you be me girlfriend?" "Um, well, I already have a boyfriend so I can't." "Oh well thank you anyway." Then he said something else, but all I understood was "hotel room." So I figured no matter what he had said, it was something I didn't want to hear so I just responded, "no." "Oh well thank you anyway miss." Then at the next stop h...