Sisters

 

Annika and I at my engagement party

So, advance apologies for this way too long post with far too many photos, but this is highly necessary. My baby sister and my best friend, Annika, moved to France on Tuesday. Yes, you heard me right, France. She graduated this spring with a degree in French and International Studies, and she has a job now in Angers, the same city she lived in for study abroad two years ago.

I miss her already. Even though we haven't even lived in the same state for four years now, and even though we've done this before when she was doing her study abroad, this is just tough. She's really moved there. She bought a one way plane ticket! I talked to her this morning on Skype and she already has an apartment. My baby sister is all grown up.

Sweetness

According to my mother, I was not super happy about getting a sister in the first place. I once told her that if Annika had never been born, I would have gotten all the attention.

On our way to summer camp

We didn't always get along super well, especially in our teen years. If our lives had been a bad teen movie I would have been the outcast freak and she would have been the popular goody two shoes. We clashed a lot, but every once in a while when we let our guards down we would have a really good time together. It was just a taste of what was to come.

Once I left home for college things got so much better. We got over the boxes we had put ourselves into, and got to know each other as adults. She became my very best friend. We are very different, yet so alike. I think that though we have different skills and interests, our brains are wired in the same (very strange) way. We really get each other. Most of the time when we hang out we finish each other's sentences and then end up tangled up together on the floor laughing, with no idea how we got there.

At my wedding

We have chosen very different paths in life. I am a college drop out. I married young and I am trying to get knocked up and start my family. My sister is very driven. She graduated from college (where she had an academic scholarship) as a member of an honor society with a double major. She wants to have an important successful career. She is moving to freaking France! She plans to get married and have a family, but someday, in the distant future. Even though we're doing different things, we're very supportive of each other. She is really excited to be an aunt someday soon.

Dressed up for a Todd Rundgren concert

In Disneyland this past spring

I will miss being able to call her whenever I want, or being able to take a weekend to pay her a visit. But I'm so excited for her to have this opportunity. And fortunately, for Christmas this year, my parents are taking Kyle and I to France to visit her for a week. I can't wait to see her in her element. 

In a Eugene bar, celebrating her college graduation

To bring this back to my blogging purpose, my sister is the reason why I am definitely going to have more than one child. I can't imagine my life without her, and knowing the wonderful experience I've shared with her, I truly believe that the best gift I could give my child is a sibling. I know that my kids may not end up best friends like Annika and I, but I want to give them the opportunity to have someone like her. She understands me in a way that no one else I have ever met, and in a way I don't think anyone else ever could. Amazing.

With our friends (and a drag queen!) at her going away party last week