Shout-outs Part 4: Sisters

April is at Showers of Joy. She's the middle sister. I'm the oldest. Danielle is the youngest. Danielle is not actually on my blog roll because her blog is private, but she said she wanted me to write about her, so here I go.

April was my first best friend. We did everything together. We'd storm our neighborhood in Oklahoma, wandering all around, visiting our friends, and we even went across the street to the elementary school to play on the playground behind the building. We still don't know why our mom let us do all of that at 3 and 5 years of age. We remember it like we had no supervision on our outdoor excursions but my mom remembers it differently. ;)

Sorry for all of the really bad quality photos ahead.

Here apparently we are NOT best friends because I am sure the evil baby is trying to take my doll.

Sister and friends.

We teased Danielle by saying that she was the baby and we had no time for her, that she was the forgotten sister. Well that is not exactly true. Once she was old enough to play with us, we had a lot of adventures with each other. We'd play house where April and I were sisters who married brothers, and we had a gaggle of children. I had a baby named Melissa that loved April more than me so April adopted her. My name was always Sarah and April was Lacey. When Danielle was old enough to join us in our play, she became my oldest daughter, Vicky. We'd pretend that it was "robbery week", where the radio newscasters would announce that this was the week that robbers came out to steal from you, and the general public was warned to stay in their homes. Then we'd scare ourselves silly pretending some bad guys were after us. If only that was really how it worked, haha!

The three of us spent hours playing house and Barbies, getting so involved in complicated plot lines. We didn't really enjoy playing dolls with other friends because they obviously didn't know the right way to play.

We had one house story line where one of us was blind and one of us was in a wheelchair and we were orphans, I think. We developed deaf voices, and mine was pretty darn realistic sounding, thank you very much. We put on skits for our parents, sometimes they were fun, like we were in a circus, or magicians, and sometimes we portrayed our parents and the things they did that drove us nuts. Note to my children, it was not appreciated like we thought it would be so don't get any ideas. ;)

We always said that we'd live close by when we were grown, hoping to be on the same street! We had never lived near family. We did not know our cousins and grandparents and extended family. We felt like strangers at family gatherings. We had no real bond with them and we'd only see them every year or two, if that.

We remained close even through the teen years because we were now homeschooled and had become mighty scared little hermits who hated leaving the house in fear that someone might see us. We were awkward and geeky with each other, safe in our our little world. We videotaped ourselves starring in our own music videos, which you will NEVER see because we were way too old to be so weird. We struggled with living in the deaf world as hearing people. We fought over who was going to interpret for our parents.

Eating ice cream with no hands or spoons. Well, Dani was apparently too prim and proper to do it that way. Everyone should do this at least once in their life!

Sisters are also horribly mean and cruel, like the time they took a picture of me as I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. The little brats!
Please tell me that everyone has an ice pack strapped to their face after surgery!

(I could of course be horribly mean and cruel by posting the many unflattering pictures I have of them from their teen years, but then I'd no longer be able to blog because I'd be dead...)

And then, some tall, skinny guy came into our world and changed things forever. I fell deeply in love and eventually I moved just about as far away as possible. It crushed us girls, all the dreams of being close by, giving our own children what we did not have- close relationships with extended family.

And yet, we are still close. We don't talk nearly as much as we'd like, with living in different time zones and having busy lives. We definitely don't get to see each other as much as we'd like to. But our sister bond is a bond that will last forever and I am so grateful for these girls and all of the memories we share.
Here we're looking into one of those funny shaped mirrors so we look like dwarves. It is a bad picture with the flash, but it's still cute to me.

Danielle, Mom, Me, April

My family ended up moving from Maryland to the Chicago area a couple of years after I moved to California. It was really weird for me because Maryland was home and Chicago was a foreign land. I felt rather displaced. But I quickly learned that home is where your family is, no matter where they live.

April is now expecting her first child, a little boy named Blake. She and her husband are so excited to welcome him into their family. She used to work as an interpreter but it was getting harder for her to work during the first few months of her pregnancy with the morning sickness and complications she was having. She's now loving being at home, decorating the nursery and preparing for little Blake's arrival. She has a gorgeous townhouse that I still haven't seen.

Danielle is working as a nanny, caring for three girls. She posts some really cute stories about what she experiences with those kids on her blog. Too bad it's private, hint hint Dani! ;) Just kidding.

I'm not even sure what to say about my sisters. They've been there for me my whole life, through thick and thin. We've laughed our heads off until we peed our pants (*cough* thathappenedtomewhenIwasfourteen*cough*) and we've gone through some hard times. I know they will always support me and love me no matter what. I think anyone would be blessed to know them and befriend them.

Sisters are built in best friends and I love mine with my whole heart.