A Tribute to Leah Getz

Today celebrates a very special day in the Getz family. On this very date, back in 1972, M*A*S*H* premiered on CBS. Although that day was probably pretty exciting, it could not possibly be compared to what happened on September 17, 1998. That's the day that my family and I went down to Springfield to see our newborn baby sister Leah Marie Getz!

Leah was born on September 17, 1998, and was adopted into the Getz family just several days later. Since that day, our family has been blessed with a funny, clever, artsy, spunky, gregarious, little girl with the unique ability to never look bad in a picture. It's true! Every single picture that Leah is in both her eyes and her smile are beaming. Take a look for yourself:


She's so cute. Her black, curly hair. Her radiant smile. Leah looks great in this picture too:)

Leah has so many unique abilities and talents that she brings into our family that it's hard for senior editors of blogs to know quiet how to begin a tribute to her. For one, she's super creative. Leah just recently entered the Morton Pumpkin Festival Pumpkin Decorating Contest. For her pumpkin, she painted the gourde to resemble a Bethlehem landscape, then she cut out figures to resemble the Nativity characters and glued them around the pumpkin to show them walking to the manager. My words don't nearly do the pumpkin justice. Trust me, I saw it last weekend. Da Vinci never did anything close to it.

Leah is also very athletically gifted. When Dan was in early high school, he had his friends out to play capture-the-flag. Being a nice brother, he let his younger sisters play...much to the chagrin of his friends. Little 8-year old Leah wound up being able to run down all of Dan's friends. Even now, she covers ground like a lioness converging on a stray gazelle.

Also, her humor is unrivaled across the board of 11-year old Americans. Leah has the quickest wit of any girl I know. We'll be having a conversation about something and she'll interject with a one-liner, and when we're all cracking up, she'll just act like nothing happened. One of her great go-to catch phrases is the "just-kidding" quip at the end of a hilarious sentence. As I did with Joel, I submit the following video for Leah to watch:



So, there you go, Leah. I know that you worth much more to our family than just three paragraphs of praise. You are a great little sister, and your youthful optimism and humorous personality truly brighten up the day of everyone you meet. Happy Birthday, and see you tomorrow!