Sista-sista!

Today at 10:10am my sister celebrated 20 years since she barged into my perfect world as an only child. Happy Birthday Sis!

This morning she had a bit of a sad moment when she realized she wasn’t a teenager anymore, but then I reminded her that she still has to wait a year until she can legally drink in the United States and that seemed to brighten her day thinking that there are still some limitations to overcome.

I love these pictures of her from when we were in Cortona, Italy a couple of summer’s ago (Its where they filmed Under the Tuscan Sun!). She was wearing this adorable linen mini dress with yellow, brown and turquoise accents and then suddenly we came upon a beautiful field of sunflowers. We pulled over to take photos and her dress matched perfectly. You couldn’t have even planned it for them to match so well.

Despite the bitter cold weather here (especially compared to Cortona!) and the impending stress of Christmas, I hope that she has a great birthday. The story in our family is always that she came home from the hospital on Christmas morning and she’s the best Christmas gift I ever got, which is true. I love her in a way that only sisters can love each other (remind me of this next time she ruins one of my sweaters). We finish each other’s sentences, laugh together at mundane things in movies, go shopping and point out the same stuff, we even have been known to draw the same picture in the game Pictionary with our eyes closed – I can’t picture not having that someone in your life who just sees things so similar, and yet different at the same time.

And because she teased me for putting up the 80s photo of my Dad on his birthday, I present you with my favorite picture of her – an image that sums up the little lady that we all love:

Sam’s addiction to chocolate began at an early age. Here she is caught trying to eat Quik chocolate milk powder right out of the tin. Her mouth, hands, shirt and pants are covered, as is the floor. To this day you can’t be sure if there are chocolate chips in the cupboard for making cookies because she may have gotten into them.