Sisters

 Sisters.
I have a lot of sisters.
Growing up in a family of girls (until age 10 when we adopted my brother) was one of my favorite things about growing up.
It's funny how I perceive the girl fights and the drama because mixed in were a lot of laughs and late night talks.
It was worth the drama.

My sisters teach me. This certain sister in particular has taught me more about how special we all are.
She doesn't speak at all but she's amazingly smart and I love it when I get to see her smile.

 She happens to be the only sister younger than me and I loved being her older sister. I am grateful for the experience of being close in age to her because I got to teach this sister a lot and spend a lot of time with her growing up.

I'm grateful for the 'olders' too.

 I remember many times laying next to my older sisters and having them read me books and falling asleep to their voices.

 I remember the "We're best buddies, yeah!" chant this sister and I made up as kids and I still consider her my best buddy.

 I remember matching clothes and Easter dresses and shopping together many times.

 I remember loving to give gifts...can you tell? Even in the picture, I'm motioning to make sure everyone knows I got her that "rad-i-cool" shirt!

 I remember when my bestest buddy broke my collar bone---because even sisters fight dirty sometimes. :) And I still loved her and wanted to be her best friend.

 We took many family trips and sang many car songs together. On top of that, my older sisters and I have sung on numerous occasions together in church and even at the ASU basketball games.

 One day, we all grew up. We all became mothers (besides Candace---our awesomely special needs sister). And we are all still friends.

We are all different and unique and live different lives but we love each other so much.

And our dad loves to throw pillows at us when we're taking pictures together...

The End!

PS: Mostly I wrote this because we are having a girls night tonight and I can't wait to spend the night with my sisters and mom {We'll miss you, Karin!}. I'm one lucky gal.

Sisters

Reasons why I love my sisters:

They stick by my side through "tornado" weather.
They make me laugh.
They're pretty awesome.
And sometimes, they even offer me free pizza. {Let's face it, that's the #1 reason.}

My Sister's First Word

I have a very special little sister. Actually, I have 4 of them but this particular sister is quite unique and so very special to the rest of us. She is autistic and doesnt speak at all. She is 20 years old now and the youngest of us sisters. {She's the one in the middle}
I remember when we were little, I used to have dreams that she would speak and wake up believing they were true...like she was just fooling us and choosing not to speak.
Well, it isnt true. As smart as she is {and she is smart}, she doesnt speak. She can read and type on her communicating device but her mouth has never created true pronunciations of words...

...until today.

Currently, we are staying at my parents' house and babysitting my little sister while my parents are out of town. As I walked down the hallway today, I was stunned to hear what sounded like talking coming from the playroom. I quietly peered through the door to see my sister playing with her blocks and saying, "Mommmmmmm-ma." quite clearly, over and over again.

I quickly called my older sister in the room (the one on the right in the picture) and she told me to record it on my phone, which I did. I sent it to my parents and told them to give me a call when they were free.

When my mom called, I didnt quite know how to feel. Was I supposed to cry at this enormous break through? Was I supposed to laugh? Call someone? Announce it to the world?

Because I am not sure my sister knows what she is saying, this may not constitute a "first word" label but it is honestly the first thing she has ever said, besides her constant humming. So with permission from my parents, I knew this was blog worthy.

My sister is such a special, smart girl. She is always surprising us with something new. I think she was around 12 years old when my parents learned that she could read and type on the computer. It seems that ever since then, she is always learning something new. A couple years back, we learned that she has the entire hymn book from our church memorized. All 300-and-something pages of it! We like to play a game where we will write down the name of a hymn and have her read it, and she can flip straight to it.

It amazes me how special this young girl is. She has touched my life in so many ways and I am so lucky to be learning from such an amazing daughter of God.

I heard from someone once that Heavenly Father sends these special children to earth with their handicaps because he is protecting them for much greater things in the next life. I believe that is true and know that my sister is truly perfect.

And that's how Suze sees it.