gratitude: day 23

today i'm grateful for little sisters.

i wasn't always grateful. but i am now.

i have one little sister. her name is kelli. when i was younger, i really wished she could have been a boy. i used to call her brian. she didn't like that very much.

my mom used to dress us in matching clothes. i know, can you believe it!? matching clothes. it made me puke. kelli loved it. my mom loved it. i considered it the worst kind of torture. as if having a little sister wasn't bad enough, she had to go and dress like me too.

kelli considered herself a budding artist when she was little. she covered a fabric basket of mine in yellow highlighter. she decided my pound puppy needed more spots - lots more.

kelli is convinced i tried to end her life multiple times. as an infant, she wandered around the house in a walker with wheels. i left the gate to the basement {read: unfinished basement with nothing but cement at the bottom of the stairs} open. you guessed it: down kelli tumbled, walker and all. when she was a little older, i decided to be daring and hang off the side of her crib. she {of course} wanted to be just like me, so she climbed out of her crib. only she wasn't as good, so she fell...and her bottom teeth went through her bottom lip...and she had to get stitches. when she was a few years older i may or may not have almost poked her eye out with scissors.

although i would never admit i tried to end her life, i did try to end blue dollie's life. oh man, kelli loved {er, loves} this thing. all i would have to say is, "i'm going to flush blue dollie down the toilet" or "i'm throwing blue dollie away" or "i'm {insert ridiculous statement here} blue dollie" and she would be a puddle of tears.

kelli got away with anything. let's say i'm six and she's three. something happens. i get in trouble because i know better. now, i'm nine and kelli is six. something happens. i get in trouble because i know better. funny: i knew better when i was six, but kelli doesn't? i guess so. once when i came home to visit, my brother and i heard kelli tell my mom to shut up. we waited. boy was she going to get it. ...she didn't. what!? WHAT!? yah, she didn't. i also looked in the pantry after i moved out to see what kelli took for lunches. squeeze-its, capri suns, fruit roll-ups...all sorts of goodness that weren't even spoken of when other kids were in the house. kelli got away with anything.

kelli was always skinner than me. except when she was pregnant. mwa ha ha.

lest you think our growing up years were entirely horrendous, there were good times. kelli was and still is an amazing cleaner. she loves to clean. loves it. and my brothers and i could pay her to clean our things. win. win. she was hilarious when we were sick...kind of our own personal comedian for the day.

as we got older, i became okay with kelli not being a boy. ironically, that's when she started dressing like one. she hated church because she had to wear skirts or dresses. she wore shorts to school every day but one during fourth grade. we lived in utah. that's cold. later, she had a navy blue nike sweatshirt that could have fit two or three kellis inside. she wore that every day. my mom struggled to get her to wash it. gross, kelli.

as we grew even more, kelli took over all my old jobs. when i left for college, she took my job at einstein bagels. in college, she took over my job at the library {after she mistakenly passed up an offer for my job at the copy center}.

but it was during these years we became really good friends. she loved when i came home from byu for a weekend. she was grounded for a month one year {during christmas, new years and her birthday}, so my friend and i came home to ring in the new year with her. when she came to byu, we saw each other all the time. she'd come to my apartment or visit me at work. we ate lunch and dinner together sometimes. we went grocery shopping together...and sang really loud in the car as we drove. when ryan went away for his internships during the summer, kelli was my right hand woman. we often took her to/from her cna classes and her night shifts at the hospital. i'm still not sure how she balanced all of that: school and working the night shifts.

kelli's a great dancer. not everyone knows this. she invented and has perfected what we like to call "ugly dancing." she even gets my mom to do it. we dance in the car all the time. she used to record n*sync and britney spears and backstreet boys concerts and learn the dances. and she's good! i think she just learned miley cyrus's hoedown throwdown. can't wait to see it. count on kelli to know the words to every song on the radio and who sings them.

in addition to her great dancing skills, kelli was also a budding gymnast. when she was going to be placed in my gymnastics level, i quit. she's also pretty good at sports. she played volleyball in middle school. and she always played on our ward young women teams. i remember one basketball game where i had made a few baskets...and no one said anything even remotely encouraging. then kelli gets put in and makes one good move and the leaders squealed with excitement. that was the last young women basketball game i played. i guess little sisters are just better at some things? who knew.

kelli has the most beautiful BIG brown eyes. hehehe.

kelli was the third person we told we were having a baby. she should feel honored.

when i moved to california, kelli cried. so did i.

and right after i left, she decided to be all grown up and get engaged and then married and then move to arizona and have a little girl and buy a house and do all these grown-up things.i guess little sisters grow up too?

i'm so grateful for mine.