Happy Birthday Shoutout #2 - Clint

Here is the second birthday shout out via the blog (although I did manage to get a card off to him too as I don't believe he reads my blog, plus I found the perfect card).

My brother-in-law Clint

I first met Clint during my wedding festivities. He was my brother-in-law's plus one, although he had been that for many years. He was thrust into the family at that crazy time of wedding preparation and the actual event and so he didn't get to ease into the family like I had. 

My mother was the first to interrogate ask him all about his life at my wedding reception. She liked him right off probably because they had a lot in common; intelligence, humor, and the not suffering of fools gladly thing . Clint went with the flow of the festivities, the wedding, and the entire 745,000 members of the Boos clan. It couldn't have been an easy entrance.

Weddings were the events of choice for the entire family get-togethers for the next several years as one by one siblings were married. Clint and I naturally hung out at these events, adding each year the newest in-law. Somehow we were always seated with each other in the pews and at the receptions and someone was always wanting to take our pictures. It was like a tradition, much to my please-don't-take-my-photograph mentality. He made the events fun as he made fun of the events and we had a lot of good laughs together.

Clint is quite the charming, suave, debonair gentleman in his own mind, but we have learned quickly there is a lot more to him than that. He is very caring, despite his pretending that he isn't. That was never more true then when the kids started arriving in the family. He took on the role of uncle immediately wrecking havoc in their little lives with threats to spank them and lock them in closets, but the children saw right through that facade and gravitated to him instantly.

He is very content to stay in the background sometimes disappearing for hours, but he can suddenly reappear as if he were there the entire time that he wasn't. I probably have spent more time with him than with any of my brother-in-laws (not including his husband). I know he loves coffee, traveling, and animals. He REALLY loves dogs, and I blame him for the addition in our family. For years he use to send pictures of dogs from our local pound to my children and husband. He threatened to give us one or two for Christmas and use to tell my kids to ask Santa for a dog.

He is generous, has a dry sense of humor, and under what he would say was his black heart is really a heart of gold. We were thrilled when he and Tom's brother were able to make marriage official, but really, by then he was already part of the family and one of us; much to his chagrin I'm sure he would say.

We don't get to see as much of him as we would like, but I think this year we will travel to California and make him see us. In the meantime I wish him a very Happy, Happy, Birthday and send him tons of virtual hugs and kisses. I'll save the Birthday licks for when I see you in person. We love you!