Sisters

I have two sisters, one 19 months younger then me, and one 4.5 years older then me. Growing up, 4.5 years was a pretty big age difference, but we still played together quite a bit. Granted it was mostly a slave game that Heather made up to get Erica and I to clean her room and bring her food (she sat in bed, speaking into a hollow toy tree to make her voice echo, calling us J8 and E6, our first initials and our age), but I think we still all had fun. And you have to admit, Heather was pretty creative.

Some of my most fun memories are of a summer that Heather and Ammon (at the time her boyfriend, now her husband) came home and lived with us while on break from BYU. We had a Super Nintendo that our dad had hidden because it had caused too many fights, but we easily found it and snuck it out every night to play it together. We had devised a complicated plan of action in case we heard anyone coming. Everyone had a job. Heather: grab all the controllers and run them to the console, hand console off to Erica. Erica: run console to the bedroom off the family and hand it off to Jennette. Jennette: hide console in cupboard in bedroom. Ammon: scream.

One night that summer we dressed in jammer-jams (button down PJ's), Ammon's complete with a necktie, and went to the drive-in theater. I have pictures of this night somewhere in my huge bin of old pictures, and someday I will find them and post them. This night is one of my favorite nights of my life, and probably the hardest I've ever laughed. I honestly don't even remember what was so funny (beyond Ammon's necktie), although I do know someone sprayed orange juice out of their nose and all over my mom's van. Someone tried to get out of cleaning it up, but E15 and J17 were not having it.

Now that we are all adults we still have wonderful times together. The three of us got to spend a week together in Costa Rica this past January, a week I will always treasure. Erica and I are so much alike in so many ways, it is almost creepy. So many times we say the same obscure thing at the same time with the same inflection and then laugh the same exact laugh. Heather is so caring and so protective of her little sisters. Kind of hard to believe now, but Tom and I actually had a hard time conceiving before we had Harper. I remember taking negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test, it was so depressing. One early Saturday morning I thought for sure I would see a little pink plus sign, but it wasn't so, and I called Heather crying. She cried with me, then told me to go hug my husband, the best advice I could get. I feel so connected to both my sisters, sometimes I sit at home and I swear I know what they are feeling.

Today I found out I am having my third little girl. Harper, born on Erica's birthday, Nora, born on my birthday, and our new baby, due on Heather's birthday. After having Nora I had a hard time dealing with the fact that I would never be able to give 100% of my time to each child now that I had more then one, but someone reminded me that I was giving them a gift they could never have on their own - a sister. So thank you mom, for giving me my two wonderful sisters (and, of course, my brother, whom I love equally but who isn't included in this post - but will be on my next pregnancy when I find out I'm having a boy due on his bday), and thank you to my sisters for being you.