Another Funny Story

My cute brother Peter gave me a belated birthday present this summer. I think he's been planning it for a while - he had to hunt the thing down on ebay and that took a while. Plus he didn't come up to SLC until well after my birthday. But when he did, and presented me with my gift, I was delighted!

What he gave me was an ancient video game called Galaxy II. It's actually kind of a dumb game, but that is not how I felt about it in 1982! Our family owned this game, and Adam and Peter and I all adored it. I don't think Margaret cared in the slightest. But the rest of us? Basically we duked it out over it all the time. I even remember that missionaries lived with us for a while, and they would spend their day off playing as well. So it couldn't have been that dumb.

The way Peter presented me with the gift made for the best surprise. The game, when turned on, emits a jangly little tune that is now a part of my permanent long-term memory. I mean, it's basically lodged in my DNA now. So when Peter came to SLC, we were sitting around, and he went and fetched the game and just held it behind my head and then turned it on. There was not even a millisecond of curiosity. I knew EXACTLY what it was and let out a yelp of joy. We Romney kids do love our items of nostalgia, don't we? 

What's been really fun since then is having it around and showing it to other people. They tend to really get into it too. Witness Romney's friend Cami on the day we went to go see the Barbie movie together. (That's a different story. Movie of the summer, everyone wore pink to go see it, taking photos and raving about it....and I mostly hated it.)

Cami having the full Galaxy II experience

Pre-movie photo shoot, love those cute girls in pink

Adam came in to town, and I have to include the videos of him and and Park playing - just so you can hear the little tune. Adam was also pretty psyched to get his hands back on the game. The excitement doesn't last long because, like I said, there's not much to this little simplified Space Invaders game, but it's sure fun to flip it on and play a few rounds from time to time.

Speaking of Adam, he also gave me a super generous birthday gift. Because I was turning 50, he sent me an email containing 5 $50 gift cards. How nice is that? The first gift card was to my favorite drink stop, Thirst. It made me think that all 5 gift cards were for sodas. Yikes! I mean, I do love stopping at Thirst for drinks, but even I thought that $250 in gift cards there was a little crazy. It made me laugh though. Turns out, only one of the cards was for Thirst. The rest were for a cool little knitting shop on Bainbridge Island. I sure had fun doing some online shopping, picking out enough beautiful yarn to keep me busy for months. 

My sweet brothers. I love them.