Tuesday, August 27, 2013

A Beastie Poet who can build things! = Alvin

Going to get all my August birthdays in this week so there will be at least three this week!

Alvin is my one of my older brothers and he is number 3 of 9 in our family. I have two sisters that were born on the same day and I have two brothers that were also born on the same day. Alvin is one of those brothers. Funny thing is that the other brother born on his birthday 18 years later looks so much like him, so much that if there were the same age they would probably look like twins.

Alvin is 13 years older than me and he is a tall manly kind of guy. I really don't remember if Alvin was mean but us littler kids were kind of afraid of him because he put a note on his door one Christmas morning saying that if he was woken up before 7am he was going to break their face! Of course he didn't and of course no one woke him up cause we were not going find out what would happen if we did wake him up.
But seriously he was a teenager I am sure I would have done the same if I had 6 younger siblings bugging me.

Alvin is such a gentle guy you would never think that the above story would have ever taken place.

Alvin has many talents and one of those is the amazing things he can do with tools! He wife, Tye, has commissioned him to make many things in their married life. Beds that look like play houses, a life size play house in their back yard and many more things that I could probably not even list! So a tool belt was in order for his amazing talents!



My brother is also and amazing cook! I know that if I get invited over to dinner at Alvin's I am in for a dang good home cooked meal. He is most amazingly talented with dutch oven cooking. We use to have an annual dessert dutch oven cooking contest at our family reunion and most people did not want to enter because we knew we would be shamed by the talents of Alvin. One year he made a dessert that I can't remember what the name was but it was a flaky filled pastry that you would not think you could attempt in a dutch oven! Pretty sure he won that year and many others. :)



Alvin is what you would call a Man's man. Sporty, handy and into hunting. He enjoys the bow hunt the most. So compound bow cookies were in order. My hubby even went bow hunting once with Alvin.  He was thinking he was going to be Mr. Hunter, bought himself his own bow and everything. I amused him and encouraged him to go with but knowing my husband I knew it was something he would not fully embrace and alas he realized that bow hunting is pretty darn hard and that it was not his thing and the bow was eventually sold. :)



I also threw in one little cookie that says Poet. Seriously Alvin is a Poet and you wouldn't even know it. I have not heard all of his work but I hear it is good. He says that he has not done that for years. He also is very good at reciting poetry. You can picture him as being a cowboy poet, he definitely fits that bill.



Now this pictures does not show it very well but this is Hotel California. This is my memory of Alvin. The song "Hotel California" by the Eagles has always and will always remind me of my brother. Back in high school they use to vote on kids for personalities such as most talented, class clown, best strut etc etc... Alvin was voted in as the Beast in "Beauty and The Beast". Not that he was ugly or scary looking he was very tall and I think intimidating. So onto the song, it was released the year Alvin graduated from high and it was played often in our home in the lyrics they talk about a beast....

"Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast"

Since they called Alvin the beast and the song talked about a beast I always think of my brother when I hear that song.



Happy Birthday Alvin! I heard you had a great time having dinner with your family up in the mountains. It was probably dutch oven!























If you want to see the cookies that I did for his awesome kids you can see them here, here, here or here.

1 comment: