sunshiney days, how I love you.

I hadn't pulled out my camera in several days, due to very troublesome rain, rain, and more rain, which was making me go through withdrawal.

So when God gave us an absolutely stunning Sunday, I grabbed my camera and Hadley after the church meal and got me some serious therapy. 

Hadley is a photographer herself, and so there is a terrible lack of pictures of her beautiful face. This is a crying shame in need of remedy, especially since her hair looked so amazing on Sunday.

Every Sunday on our way to and from church, we go past this amazing driveway lined with flowering trees. At springtime, every week when we go past it, we crane our  necks to see the absolutely amazing beauty of all those trees bursting with blooms, all in a row.

And this Sunday, I got to photograph it, for the first time ever.

I thought I was done with blossom photos for the year, since our trees have morphed from fluffy pink clouds to shiny red-leafed trees. Or as Hadley  puts it, "they aren't cherry trees anymore!"

This, I think, is truly the last of them. 

Meet my sister Bethany. This is the one who never lets me take her picture...and when I do, makes the most colossally disturbing and impossible faces ever.

I told her to find her happy place. "Think about Dietrich Bonhoeffer!" (she loves him majorly).

And then, she did smile. But... yeah. Kinda creepy.

I don't know if I can manage without these for a whole year. sigh.

In an attempt to make me stop taking pictures of her, Bethany commandeered my camera.

Yesterday was Bethany's birthday. She turned twenty. There's a million things I could say about her... I could write a book about her crazy idiosyncrasies,  how our personalities are about as opposite as you can get, her mad writing skills, and her absolute devotion to Jesus Christ.

an example of our opposite personalities: I just wanted to die and go to heaven in those pink trees, and Bethany was happier when she found the one with whom she said she had more in common--the dead, black tree stump.

About our eerie telepathic moments, her explanations of complicated concepts and confusing movie plots. And our late, late, late night talks, when I tell her everything, even when I didn't plan on it.

Maybe I'll write that book someday.

But today. all I want to say is: Happy birthday, beautiful and brilliant sister. My life would stink without you. 

And in the words of Christopher Robin:

"If there ever there is a tomorrow when we're not together...there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."