They Might Be Giants (well, half of them at least)

This pic's a few years old - we're missing three kids from this lineup...

When I first met Rob, he claimed he was at least 6'4". And then he met my family...and realized he couldn't really exaggerate his height. Suddenly, overnight, he shrunk down to 6'3" with an occasional "Well, maybe 6'2"" confession thrown in.

My mom always considered herself tall at 5'9". Can you hear that? Ahhh...the sound of my older set of sisters laughing. I guess 5'9" is fairly tall...until you start mixing DNA with a 6'5" husband. My dad totally clinched our fates. Waaaaay at the bottom of the totem pole, there's my sister Kendra and I, hovering right around the shrimpy 6-foot mark. Just tall enough to make wearing heels a little ridiculous at times, but not tall enough to make people stare. Then there's my sister Jane who measures in right under 6'4". Aaaand cue the stares. Then...drumroll, please...my younger brother Jesse who won't let us measure him, but stands somewhere around the 6'6"? 6'7"? mark.

So we're not the tallest people ever, but it sure is funny when we all stand together in public. Which, I guess, makes the McDonalds trip experience even more awkward.

What's even funnier is my second batch of siblings. Kayla's the only one old enough now to be "full-grown" (although I'm not sure she actually qualifies height-wise as "full-grown"), and she just flat-out stopped growing at 5'1", thereby securing her fate as the beneficiary of the brunt of our teasing. (Although Kayla's just biding her time until our teeny tiny sister Angel "grows" up...)

My favorite has always been laughing with Kayla at public introductions. My "Meet my sister Kayla!" is almost always followed by a "Oh, I should have guessed! I totally see the family resemblance." And as I look way way down and she looks way way up, our eyes threaten to reveal the unrelated DNA and barely-contained laughter lurking there.

And as I reach down to pat the top of her head while she hugs my bellybutton, I get a text from Jane that while wearing 3.5" heels, she just accidentally and single-headedly took out the overhead holiday decorations at a hotel.