unlike grace, i'm not archiving the family photos...so you'll have to settle for some stock photos, if you will....but i wanted to be sure to wish wendy a very happy 30th birthday.  wendy's always been a very thoughtful older sister...always contemplating her next move;) mom and dad look exhausted...but not as worn out as they would be by the time they had this motley crew: 
a top ten of my favorite memories of wendy: 1. being lab partners with wendy in high school chemistry was awesome. not many siblings get to have classes with each other but wendy and i even got to be lab partners. wendy had a knack for never really having to study for tests and was a natural brainiac. it was a great priviledge to follow in her footsteps in school because she had set the bar of quality so high that all my teachers assumed i was as smart as she was. thanks wendy. 2. wendy and i used to make predictions every summer before memorial day of what would happen during the summer at all of the church meetings we went to (starting with the memorial day meeting at murray rd. and lasting through the labor day meeting in iowa). we wrote each prediction down, sealed them in an envelope and then read them after we got back from the meeting in iowa. wendy was the master of this game. i never won once...and that was pretty much any game with wendy...she was just that good:) 3. wendy, as previously mentioned is *very* smart. she tricked me into quite a few things as a kid...one of the most memorable though by far was when she got me to sign a contract saying i would make her bed and clean the room for a year. she wasn't playing around...she got it in writing. i can't recall what lead to the fateful contract, but you better believe i had to honor it to the letter. wendy and i spent the better part of our childhood sharing a room and i will always appreciate how she put up with my neat-freak tendencies, my teenage angst, and my boy drama. she was always the one with the sage advise and i will always be greatful mom and dad moved me out of sharing a room with the bed-wetter who will not be named (LOL...soooooo kidding). 4. the grass is always greener on the other side. when i was in jr. high, i thought wendy had the *best* clothes. if you've ever had a sister you know that borrowing clothes from them is pretty much next to impossible...especially when they don't want anything to do with your wardrobe (so a swap is out). at the time, wendy didn't really like the guy i was "seeing" (i.e., hanging out with in the hall between classes and passing notes to) so she told me, "abby, you can wear that sweater, if you promise to break up with mark on monday." did i mention how dumb i was in jr. high? yeah...i accepted her terms, wore the sweater out on the friday night to my friend's house...and promptly broke up with mark on monday. well played wendy, well played. 5. wendy's creative writing skills are legendary...i mean...you've been to her blog, right? her journals that she wrote as a kid are some of the funniest things you will ever read. she almost always was doing some introspective writing...and when she wasn't doing that, she was reading constantly. as a matter of fact, she read so much that if wendy got in trouble with the parental units--she got grounded from reading books. 6. there is no one in the world i know who loves doing taxes as much as wendy. she likes to do financial planning and for "fun" she helped me my senior year of high school make up a budget for when i moved away. how many sisters do you know that would do that? 7. wendy is a shop lifter...it's true...and so is grace really. lol. i kidd, i kidd...however...one time, the management at the local grocery store was sure that wendy and grace had pilfered some brach's candy--however, after further investigation, it was revealed that grace and wendy had put their change in the box in the candy section. i still am most amused by the fact that they walked all the way to the grocery store, just to spend a dime on candy...but i guess when you need a sugar fix...you need it! actually...while we're on the subject of theft...i used to steal from wendy. i'm not proud of it...but she kept a giant "safe" full of change in one of her drawers...and unfortunately for her, the combo on the lock *never* worked. sorry wendy...i owe you approximately $12.65 in change. 8. i love the way wendy would shake her hands at her side when she was excited about something. she still cocks her wrists a little bit at her side when she get's anxious. wendy has always been a pretty cool customer so when you saw her wrists shaking around, you knew something was up in a major way...sure, it may just have been enthusiasm about "the first barefoot day of summer" but if wendy got excited...it was something you wanted to be alert for;) 9. wendy and i used to have a game before we went to bed of "dedicating" the next song on the radio to each other. yes...it was about the cheesiest thing we could think of to do, but boy was it fun to wait anxiously to hear if we were dedicating a really mushy love song or a devastating ballad to each other when the next song came up for play. my all time favorite wendy dedication to me? lionel richie's "hello"...with full out lip-synching from wendy. what a classic! for the record, wendy is also excellent at hearing and remembering lyrics. i think one of her favorite entertainments during those evenings would have to be her playing the game "what did abby just hear" and then laughing hysterically because every lyric sounds like something *completely* different to me. 10. a highlight of my childhood was playing lego land on saturday mornings. each of us had our own niche' in lego land. grace had the large blue collar family who ran the police station and the post office. wendy's lego land family were the local lab technician and doctor. sam ran the local garage and had the lego bachelor pad. i was the single gal in town with the black and white lego house who ran the local restaurant and movie theater. i will never forget the one saturday morning when wendy didn't want to play lego land anymore because she was "too old" to play. that was sad....as was any game we tried to play without wendy. she was the leader...and when wendy didn't want to play a game, the whole thing just kind of fell apart. wendy always thought of the best games to play (fake court anyone?...how about restaurant?). so to my eldest, first born sister--happy birthday...and may we all have many more memories in the years to come with you:) | 
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