{the many faces of my links}

Strawbs

He introduced himself as "Strawberry Steve" one day in church and has been known as "Strawbs" ever since. His red hair gives it away. Strangely, finding the right words to describe my brother is harder than I thought but his delightful fiance thought of some great adjectives. "Stalwart" is one of those words. I just love that she came up with that. Just saying the word out loud almost makes it so. Strawbs is committed to doing what is right. He never waivers in his dedication to his family, his religion and his goals.

Another great thing about my brother is what a peacemaker he is. You see, I'm almost certain that Strawbs is the only person in my family with whom I've never had a fight with. He's super nice to every one in the world. Every picture from our childhood, with the two of us in it, usually has Strawbs' chubby little arms around me or else he is laying a big kiss on my cheek. Being surrounded by brothers, I never wanted to play Legos, Transformers or Micromachines so Strawbs played Cabbage Patch with me a few times . . . maybe even Barbies. As we grew into our teenage years, I got nerdy glasses and Strawbs grew a huge bush of thick, red hair as well as a singing group of 5 boys called Euphony 5. Being annoyingly boy crazy, I would desperately make treats for those boys as a bribe to get them to even look in my direction. Strawbs never said anything around them to make me feel bad even though I’m sure he was annoyed with my pathetic attempts for attention (except the one time that he told his best friend that I was in love with him). I also love that he laughs really loud at my jokes so that it covers up how loudly I am laughing myself. Even if they are pity laughs, he is REALLY good at them.

Strawbs is a wonderful photographer. He has taken many pictures of family reunions, portraits, weddings, vacations and has somehow taught himself to be really good at it. So good, in fact, that he started himself a little business called "Orange Life Photography". Don't you love that name and the logo? Strawbs is eternally optimistic and "orange life" perfectly describes his personality.

He is getting married on Saturday to a really wonderful girl that we all like a lot. We're all really jazzed about the whole thing - especially since we all get to go to Seattle for the wedding! His website is rarely updated (like, since February) but here's his photography website and here's their wedding site and his Flickr site.