All Grown Up

This is my baby brother Greg. He had a pretty rough time growing up as the youngest of six kids. For example, by the time Greg came along all of the manly Halloween costumes had been spoken for so the poor kid often ended up dressed as things like a pink ninja bunny. But now Greggie is all grown up and getting ready to start his first semester at BYU. So there shouldn't be any more pink ninja bunny costumes in his future unless he has a really sadistic roommate or a really kinky girlfriend.

A large portion of the family spent the last few days helping Greg get settled in at the Y. We walked through his schedule and helped him find all of his classes, and the BYU alumni in the family pointed out points of historic interest. For example, my sister Jenny showed Greg the portions of the library where she spent most of her time...

...and my dad (who continued on the family tradition of getting kicked out of multiple church schools) showed Greg some of his old BYU hangouts.

My sister's four kids came along on our campus tour. Their favorite part was exploring the many statues, like this one of Brigham Young.

But the statue they liked best was the Lamanite on the quad. They didn't really notice that the statue was holding a peace-pipe in clear violation of the Word of Wisdom section of BYU's honor code.

They were more concerned with his blatant disregard for the dress code. Their mom wasn't around when this photo was taken, but hopefully this post will help to clear up some questions when Maxwell and Jonah ask her if they can wear loin cloths to primary.Jenny was pretty brave to spend the morning chasing her kids around campus, but I think we were all pleasantly surprised at how well behaved they were. Jenny only had to visit the campus police once...

... but Jonah swears that was all just a big misunderstanding.

While Jenny was bailing Jonah out, I took the opportunity to try out a bench that seemed to be perfectly designed for someone with a broken tail bone. It was so comfortable I almost didn't want to leave to drive back to Jenny's house.

And I wasn't the only one who thought about spending more time at BYU. Max, Jonah, Ruby, and Bentley looked ready for class...they were only about 15 years too early.

The kids are all pretty excited to have Uncle Greggie so close, but he declined their offer to live with them as their in-house-punching-bag. Instead, he is going to live on campus in the dorms.

Jenny's kids helped carry his stuff to his room this morning, then explored the whole building so that they could show Greg all of the important things...like the TV room.

While Max and Greg were scoping out the commons room, Greg's mom was busy breaking BYU rules...just like old times. Or it would have been just like old times if there was a halter top under that leather jacket and she had been sneaking out of the boy's hall at 11:00 p.m. instead of into it at 11:00 a.m. But this time she was sneaking back into the brethren-only zone to make sure that her baby's new room was livable, and even took a few minutes to make his bed for him.

It is really hard for all of us to believe that little Greggie Bryce is old enough to go to college...or that he is old enough for his mission papers to be sitting at the Church office building. Yikes.

To us, Greg will always be the baby of the family. A fuzzy 6 foot 1 baby with more OCD quirks than Mr.Monk...
... but our baby nonetheless. From pink ninja bunny to true blue BYU cougar. Time Flys.