Happy Birthday, Susie.

I was 3 1/2 when Amy Susan was born.  We called her Susie and was she ever cute.  She was as calm as I was hyper, and her eyes were deep brown.

 It was interesting for me to have a baby in the house, my own sister.  I remember my mom giving her an orange tied in a clean cotton rag to suck on for a pacifier.  Her cheeks were very kissable.  She liked to be rocked and sung to and she was very cuddly.

I was thrilled that she was cuddling cheek to cheek with me.  I begged my mom to take a picture.

As she grew she became even cuter, if that's possible.  Her voice was so adorable people would ask her name again and again to hear her say, "Susie" (What punctuation conveys the preciousness?"  Once she looked into my mother's face and observed, "You have babies in your eyes."  Okay, it was a little tough to take when she was 3 and I was 7 and everything she said was cute, and everything I said was annoying, but that's how life goes, and she had a gift.  She's still darling and we all love to hear her cute laugh.

Me, Susie and our cousin, Maren

 She was obedient and easy.  My mom's friend was amazed when that tiny little girl was setting the table.  When my next little sister was born and would be crying,  little Susie would push her around the neighborhood in the stroller.

Susie, Melinda, Nana, Mary, Me

She is caring and compassionate.  I'll never forget the day I said something sassy to my mother and made her cry.  I huffed out of the room.  When I returned, Susie had her little arms around Mom's neck making her feel so much better.  Once she had made wheat pancackes for our children for breakfast.  She asked if my little boy wanted syrup.  I thought they were delicious plain and said, "Oh he can just eat them with butter."  A while later I noticed the child hadn't eaten his pancakes.  Susie looked at me with sad eyes and said, "He has no syrup."  

Susie has a very nice singing voice.  When she was little, Mom dressed her in overalls and a straw hat and taught her the song "If I had one wish to make."  We always called for encores to this fantastic number made fabulous by her sweet sincerety and cute little voice.  It went like this, only Susie did it better.  (No bias) 

When she was a senior in high school, she and our sisters, Melinda and Mary, won the Dos Palos High School talent show with their Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."  Later they worked up an awesome  "Breakin' up is hard to do."  She wisely married a musical husband and all her children have musical gifts.

Susie and I didn't go to High School together.  At the time I thought maybe I was okay with that, but when I saw the team that the next sisters had, I realized they were the lucky ones.  In my preteen and teen years I thought she was so much younger than I was.  I wish I would have tried to be kinder to her and make her my friend when we were young, because she is wonderful and has been one of my best friends throughout my life.  

At some point I recognized that she was more responsible than me. She worked and had money for cute clothes and whatever else she needed. When I was a senior, through a certain turn of events including other people turning down the award for a different award, I was named "Best Dressed Senior Girl."  The irony came on the "take a picture for the yearbook" day.  There was actually more than one "take a picture for the yearbook" days on account of the planets not aligning..  Every time I got dressed in my "Best Dressed Senior" outfit it was from Susie's closet, so the award should actually be called, "Senior with the best dressed sister."

 By the time she got to BYU, I was married  with a baby, and she was, you guessed it, soo cute.  She was the model prep and I was the model "Wear your husband's clothes because none of your clothes fit."  But I was proud of her and waited out her glory days so we could share our motherhood journey together (which are the REAL glory days.)

BYU co-ed with my firstborn

After her marriage to Paul Johnson she spent some time in Wisconsin.  I thought she was gone forever.  Then she moved to Chicago and I moved to Nebraska.  Now we were neighbors.  I would bring my million babies to her house and get inspired to be a better homemaker.  Every Thanksgiving she taught me to make an ornament that I could give to friends.  At Christmas she sent me the best cookie recipes.  In the summer she got me excited about sewing projects; totes, glasses cases, scrapbooks, etc.  One year I brought my unfinished quilt blocks to her house so she could save me and help me succeed.  I would sew the blocks together wrong, she would pick out the errant seams in a flash.  I would try again.  She never left me and I finished every block.  

Pete, Me, Susie, Megan and Sam

We aren't neighbors any more.  I live in GA and she lives in Iowa.  But, I still call her regularly, and she gets me excited about healthy food, BYUTV, books, fitness, and whatever cool thing she's doing that I need to do.

And she's still adorable and I love her and I'm so thankful that she's my sister.

Susie and her beautiful family