rhyme has no reason

The night I arrived in Arizona most of my local family came over for dinner. That included my ever-entertaining brother-in-law, Jay. As we sat around talking Jay mentioned that he had recently found a letter I had written him 14 years ago, when he and my sister were dating. Jay is an avid Star Wars fan and when Star Wars Episode 1 came out he took my younger brother, Marcus, and me to see it in the theater. The letter was a gem that he's kept all this time so he went all the way home to get it just to show it to me . . . and then, I laughed really hard.

As a thank you for taking us to the movies, I made this card. On the front, I obviously tried to write "From: Liz and Marcus" but ran out of room and had to settle for "Marc" (which he has NEVER gone by for the record).

On the back of the card was even better. I mostly obviously attempted to write "Thank You" in big, bold letters but ran out of room again and had to get creative with the "THAN" that I had already written out.

Inside this was a hand-drawn picture of Darth Vader courtesy of 11-year-old Marcus and a poem that I had written expressing our thanks. Here's what it says, in case you can't read the above pictures:

Jay, we think you're scores of fun,
We were sad when the film was done.
Millenium Falken's are the best,
and light sabers never fail the test.
The seats we had were perfect for us,
it felt like we were on a sloping bus.
The delicious grinders (sandwiches) that we had,
didn't have one ingredient in it that was bad. 
We love to hear your funny jokes . . .
in Alice's car that smells like soap.
We thank you for all that you do
and watching Star Wars is the thing to do!
Love ya lots, Liz and Marcus

We were all dying of laughter because I had tried so hard to make it rhyme. I can just imagine myself at 13, sitting there thinking, "Now, what rhymes with 'us' . . . bus!" It's so fun to look back at the things I did as a kid. I love reading through my journals. Even though it's really embarrassing and I kind of want to burn them, I know my kids will get a kick out of some of the stupid things I said and did . . . and I hope they can also learn from the serious stuff I wrote about too. Like that "watching Star Wars is the thing to do".