Ok this will be a sappy post. (Lydia, don't you dare make fun of me.)

Dearest Darlingest Duddle (aka Rachel),

Today you turned 19 and I think that's absurd. Absuuuuurd. We're supposed to be five and seven, me with crooked bangs and wearing a dorky matching shirt/short set, and you sucking your bottom lip and wearing one of your impeccably stylish outfits. The two of us, Jo Jo Juice and Duddle.

Last time I checked, we spent our days all carefree and everything. Singing along to Point of Grace, making play dough spaghetti, seeing who could do Geosafari the fastest, you cutting the tape off my diapers, going to the Kessels house, watching Hook and Sound of Music for the millionth times, pulling oranges down from the tree for our "factory" (and you clonking me on the head with the heavy rake while doing so), going to choir camp, playing endless games of Bonkity Bonk...Monopoly...rummy...penny poker..you name it!, going to Kappy's for lunch with Grampa, watching iMax movies in the science center, going into the Statue of Liberty (and me butting in front of you in line), trading American Girl cards, burying eachother under piles of laundry, making paper chains and snowflakes, sending eachother messages in a little basket-pulley system between our bunk-bed and the wall, oh things like that.

But not anymore. Because now we're what we used to consider soooo oooold. 17 and 19, yep yep. Now we have college classes and work and life is so much more difficult...but then again, we don't let that stop us. We have two-person dance parties in the car while driving to Valencia, talk super late into the night about anything and everything, randomly stop by Dunkin Donuts or the Cuban cafe, chase eachother around the house kicking and punching eachother just for the fun of it (ok, that one should belong in the previous section, but it's too fun to give up), try on dresses and debate over which one to get, cry together (which isn't very often), go to Ashley's for movie nights, make fun of eachother, help eachother study for micro-biology and spanish exams, tell the other that she's a jerk and then apologize like 20 minutes later, take trips to Daytona, laugh so hard we get cramps, oh just things like that. We manage to still have fun. ;)

Rach, I'm praying that your 19th year will be the best ever!! You aren't simply my sister, you're one of my best friends on God's green earth. I trust you more than anyone and I love you more than I can attempt to put into words. I am so grateful for all the times you have talked sense into me, put up with me, and cheered me up. You are so incredible and fun and beautiful; I will be sad when some lucky guy comes and marries you. But then again, we won't let that stop us, will we? hahaha NO. ;) Can we say... the coolest duo of grandmas ever having wheelchair races down the hallways? Heck to the yes!!!