Saturday, March 30, 2013

Shout-out to the birthday girl!

Last year I dedicated a post to my sister and I feel the need to once again publicly share my love for my amazing sister. Also, I find it easier to tell her Happy Birthday via blog since she lives in Spain and I can never seem to quite get the time difference thing down in order to call her. I'm a failure as a sister in that regard, but hopefully this will make up for it.

I was going to share thirty-something things I love about her because I know she's turning thirty-something but I don't want to over guess and have her get offended. I could always tell her I just had so many wonderful things to write about her that I had to overshoot but I don't think she'd believe me. So I'll just leave you with the a few of my favorite memories of her.

Every Thanksgiving through high school  plus a few years after, her and I would get up early early early and go run our local 5k Turkey Trot around the mall nearby. We loved it. Not only did we get sweet shirts with a turkey on them, but free breakfast after the race. Can you think of a better way to start off Thanksgiving? It's my favorite thing about Thanksgiving, I only wish we lived closer so we could keep running it every year together. She's my favorite running buddy.

On the topic of running, when I lived with her in Japan a few years ago we started to train for a marathon together.  We had many long runs together that were always full of great conversations but usually when we'd hit mile 10 or 11 we'd start to get tired of talking to each other and need a little bit more motivation to keep going so that was usually the point where we'd pop our headphones in. Every once in awhile we'd be running along in silence and all the sudden Heather would just randomly start belting out Britney Spears or Kelly Clarkson. Always the highlight of my long runs with her. Sometimes even now when I run I find myself singing girl power songs out loud to motivate me. Strangers don't always find it as entertaining as I do.

More on the topic of singing, when she was in high-school she became obsessed with the song This Kiss by Faith Hill and would belt out the chorus of it on a regular basis. To this day my cousins still associate that song with her and when it comes on in the car I can't help but belt it out myself in her honor. "THIS KISS, THIS KISS....UNSTOPPABLE!!""

Heather drove me out to my first semester of college. It was with her on that trip that I ate my first ever buffalo burger and got to cross seeing Mt. Rushmore off my bucket list. It was also on that trip that she told me she thought she was pregnant with their first baby. She followed it up multiple times with, "I don't know how this happened!" My response to her was, "Your a nurse Heather, you should know how this reproductive thing works by now." The funny thing is that we had the same conversation when she got pregnant with the next two as well. You'd think by number 3 she'd have figured it out by then.

When we were younger and my parents would leave town they'd put Heather in charge and she was a slave driver. I affectionately nicknamed her Mrs. H which was short for Mrs. Hitler. She did not love that nickname, but it was fitting. Even though she's a softy now I whip it out everyonce in awhile just to get a rise out of her. She loves it.

I love my sister. I love my brothers a lot but I'm really REALLY especially grateful that Heavenly Father blessed me with a sister because I can't imagine life without her. She's basically the cat's pajamas.

Happy Birthday to the best sister in the world!! I hope you know how much I love and look up to you. Here's a little throwback photo from the good old days, it's one of the few photos I have of the two of us where I look better than you...only because you've got some weird squinty eyes going on :) And yes, for everyone who's wondering, those are trash bags we are wearing as make-shift ponchos.

No comments: