I'm thankful for Mark and Jenny

This is my dad and his brother Mark walking on the beach last August in Coronado.
Mark isn't particularly short, in fact, I think he's about 6', it's just that my dad is almost seven feet tall.
Mark is my dad's brother and we see him when we go to California. He wears Tommy Bahama shirts, and he's a doctor, and he laughs high and wheezy just like my dad and their sister do when something is unbearably funny. I like to talk to him. More importantly, my dad likes to talk to him. Although my dad and his brother could probably not be more different in some ways, they love each other, and they are brothers. They talk on the phone because they care about each other and sort of level each other out. When they were little, my uncle Mark used to start screaming in the kitchen that my dad was beating him up even though nothing was happening and my dad would get in trouble just because he was the big one, and Mark was the little redheaded one.
I love that story.

Jenny and I were also on the beach that day. We've always fought a lot, but she is my sister and I love her. Lately we have been getting along fairly, which is more than we can say for the rest of our lives up to this point, and I am so thankful. I love her so much. She levels me out, because she is not crazy, and I loosen her up (or I pretend I do), because I am. See in the picture how I'm flailing and she's calm? Yeah.
Tonight she let me use her report card from this term to get free Krispy Kremes, and for that, I was extremely thankful. When we were little she would make bite marks on her arms and pretend I bit her, which I didn't, but I'd get in trouble anyways. But I don't really care.

I'm thankful for Mark and Jenny tonight.
This hasn't been particularly profoundly written.
But I am.

And for good measure, a sweet picture of Jenny and my Poppy (father to my father and Mark) in 1996, when she was four and he was not. I'll have you know, he still has those red polyester pants.