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Thursday, April 15, 2010

An Addition to the Family (No, Not THAT Kind of Addition)

I got a phone call last night from my sister with some fabulous news. She's been with her boyfriend now nearly seven years and has been living with him over three years now. To put things succinctly, they are perfect for each other. They bring out the best in one another, and they've spent a fair amount of time apart from one another during the course of their relationship (he's had to serve over in Afghanistan a couple times, and she had spent a semester at sea while in college).

Anyways, my sister called me last night to say that they finally are officially engaged! I'm extremely happy for the both of them. I've long since thought of my sister's now-fiancee as a brother-in-law already, but knowing they're finally moving forward with their plans is still awesome.

Every now and then, I think about the directions my life has taken, and my sister's engagement gave me a moment to reflect on that idea again. I've thought about stuff like what would have happened had I gone to a different college, chosen a different major, worked at a different job, etc.

When my family had first moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland, we had planned on moving to Pasadena. My parents had a contract on a house and everything was locked in. Through a series of complications, that house deal fell through and my family instead found a place in Bel Air. This series of events ended up shaping all my family's lives in a number of ways. I chose Towson University as my college of choice (and as a result most of my closest friends are people I met in college) and my degree program led me to pursuing my MBA with University of Phoenix. I would never have had the type of career or made the relationships I now have had my family moved to Pasadena.

This all brings me back to my sister and her fiance. Had we moved to Pasadena, she would never have taken a job as a paralegal, worked for a lawyer, or gone to law school. Most of all though, she would never have met her fiance. They wouldn't have spent the last seven years together, they wouldn't have bought a house, they wouldn't have gotten their dog Newman (who's become the family grandchild), and they certainly wouldn't be planning their wedding.

It's funny when I think about the sequence of events and how differently things would have ended up had any number of events been even slightly different. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm extremely happy for my sister and her fiance, and I'm proud to officially welcome him into the family.

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