My sister

My sister is having a birthday April 7. 

I am her baby sister.

She was born on my mom's birthday.

It is amazing she has allowed me to live to see her birthday without killing me for tattling when we were children or correcting her grammar now that we are adults. 

I love her with all my heart.

She was born a month past my mom's due date!

My dad smoked a carton of cigarettes in the delivery room waiting on her to make an appearance.

She looks like my dad while I look like my mom.

She is so much like my dad that they fought a lot when we were younger.

While I hate the miles between us, I love that I can call her and pick up like we have never been apart. 

We shared a room (and a four poster bed) until we were teenagers.

She loves to tell stories and is great at it!

She is not so good telling a joke! 

She would do ANYTHING for a friend.

She has celebrated many a birthday with strawberry pie.

People think she is the "mean one" while in reality I am meaner  - but quieter about it.

She would eat at El Amigo seven days a week if chips and queso were a fat free food.
She makes friends with boys more easily than girls.

I lost count on her shoe collection when it topped 200.

You couldn't have paid her to read when she was a kid and now she is reading her way through the public library's fiction collection.

She has loaned me her friends as an adult even though she hated that I wanted to be friends with her friends when we were kids.

She is an amazing aunt to Emily, Katie Bug, and Kinsley.

She loves her kids fiercely.

There is a special place in Heaven for her.

She is so strong - perhaps stronger than she has ever known. 

Happy Birthday Melissa!

 "A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost" ~Marion C. Garretty

 "Of two sisters, one is always the watcher, one the dancer" Louise Glick

"It was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on... 

someone to tell on!" ~ Author Unknown

 "My sister taught me everything I really need to know, 

and she was only in sixth grade at the time." ~ Linda Sunshine

 “In a way, I was incredibly proud of her (not that I had any intention of letting it show 

while I was beating the crap out of her).” ― Meg Cabot

 “You can kid the world, but not your sister.”  ~ Charlotte Gray

 "Sisters remember things you would rather forget. In graphic detail. With proof." ~ Author Unknown

 "Sibling relationships - and 80 percent of Americans have at least one - outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust." ~ Erica E. Goode in The Secret World of Siblings

"I'm smiling because you are my sister. 

 am laughing because there is nothing you can do about it." ~Author Unknown

"If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly 

and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child" ~ Linda Sunshine