My older sister and I have always been quite different. She's always been very petite (even after having 4 kids), she has blue eyes and used to have blonde hair. She likes vanilla, I prefer chocolate, she only ate dry white meat while I love juicy dark meat. For her birthday dinner she would always want vegetable plate (just a gigantic platter of seasoned vegetables) and I always asked to go to Tony Roma's for a big plate of ribs. I could go on all day it seems...
She went off to school and got married at 19 while I took a longer route and waited til I was almost 24. She was 27 with 4 kids and I'm 26 with none. I know I don't have kids, but it seems that every mother deserves a break every once in a while. When I asked my sister if she had ever spent a night away from her little family she said "No, never...well wait, I actually have, when I was in the hospital giving birth." as serious as can be. That definitely does not count so for her birthday we convinced her to come out and visit.
She was so excited to be here we went straight downtown for a boat tour and Mexican food.On Friday morning I got to show her a lot of the scrapbooks I've done from my senior year of sports, my study abroad in Mexico and my mission. These were all such huge events in my life and since she was married and in school with children while I was away from home, I've never gotten to sit down and tell her about any of them. It was fun to share those years of my life with her.
Then I took her up to the river and we went floating. I'll never forget turning around after I went down the chute to see her coming down towards the rapids with her eyes all big and her mouth wide open in scared anticipation. She definitely got a mouthful of gross river water to start the day off. I wish I had taken my camera on the river, it was such a relaxing and beautiful float. I had so much fun just having sister time talking and laughing in our comfy tubes without a care in the world.
Saturday morning we made her our famous Texas-shaped waffles and showed her where San Antonio is. Then we took her to see our beautiful temple. I loved showing her around inside since it's a place that we've become so familiar with over the past 2 years.That afternoon we went out and shopped til we dropped! Our loving mom sent us both a gift card so we went a little crazy. I learned we have very similar shopping habits which is awesome! We went through tons of stores and found some really cute stuff. It was so fun shopping with my sister and having that girl time (although I love shopping with my husband, but he just has a biased opinion. Even if I try on the ugliest thing in the store he will still say I look smokin' in it). Since we're moving this next weekend, Carrie really wanted to help get us ready so she helped us pack and do some cleaning. It was so fun cleaning my apartment and having my sister there helping, I've never enjoyed cleaning so much. It made me sad that we couldn't do this more often! She helped a ton, and I'm grateful for a sister who was so eager to stay inside and help us clean on her vacation. She's so wonderful!
I enjoyed hearing her have little realizations like when she got up in the morning saying, "I can't believe I slept through the whole night without anybody waking me up!" or her being able to go into the bathroom without any little ones following her in there. Although I could tell that she was missing her little family like crazy, I think this weekend was just what she needed!
I know it sounds weird, but since we haven't had one on one time since we shared a room ten years ago, I was a little nervous about not having too much in common to talk about for 3 full days. But we were laughing and talking like best friends the entire weekend. I loved it and I love that we're so much closer now!
So sad to see you go!!!
