Trading Sessions and Compliments

While talking on the phone with my best friend Aleesha today, she brought up the subject of my family's trading sessions. This thought brought back a lot of endearing memories to me, and I thought about all the good ol' days. Dating back to the furthest reaches of my memory my family has 'traded'. Especially on Halloween, we would all go trick-or-treating, and the first thing we would do upon coming home was: dump out all of our candy, and trade it amongst ourselves. Sometimes you'd trade because you really wanted what someone else had, and sometimes you would just trade for fun. Trading sessions was what I looked forward to about Halloween. Dad and mom had trump cards and could get things without trading...but usually between siblings we drove a pretty hard bargain. Now, trading sessions did not just occur for Halloween, we had trading sessions multiple other times. I think primarily I had trading sessions with my little brother Ethan. At one point in time he looked like this (minus the crazy hair...I think that craziness was why the picture was taken). What a nice, little boy, and we had lots of good times together. We would take out the top drawer in our dressers, which was the designated "junk drawer" and put it all in a pile, go through what we wanted and didn't want, and then trade our 'junk' back and forth. Usually we had a really great time and it was lots of fun to get someone else's junk for awhile instead of your own. Novelty is an amazing thing:). Then, as we got older, it became a much more involved process. We got mom and dad to join us, and my older brother Wyatt, and we would wear crazy hats and bring out things that were of some actual value that we were just keeping around for a rainy day. We would spend a couple hours bickering back and forth and having a generally good time. Now my brother is big, and looks like this:
I feel old whenever I look at pictures of him now. He looks too old to be my little brother. Crazy world. Cockeyed.(Name that book all of you AP Eng peoples!)Anyway, that is my rendition of our 'trading sessions' in the Rasmussen household. I really enjoyed those sessions.

On to the second subject of this post: compliments. So, I actually spent some time in the bathroom this morning, getting ready. I wore something beside scrubs or basketball shorts and a t-shirt, and I didn't just pull my hair into a pony tail. It took me about ten minutes longer than usual to get ready, and that meant I didn't really get a breakfast today. But GUESS WHAT??? Just about every single person I met today commented on how cute I looked. One teacher even said "You look beautiful today compared to usual!" Umm....I think that was a compliment??? I realize I never take the time to get ready...but I don't even have time to sleep and eat, so really, is doing my hair a high priority? I always thought not, but today made me rethink it a little more. Is it SO surprising to see me dressed and groomed? I feel more than a little sheepish. Maybe a little less sleep would be beneficial...on the other hand, probably not. :)