Happy Birthday Amanda!

She is totally going to kill me for dredging up this picture from last summer. Especially since she donated her hair to Locks of Love and got a cute haircut in return.

Problem is, she's always behind the camera. Never in front of it. So, not many pictures of her exist.

Like the Loch Ness Monster. Or Bigfoot. Only she's a better baker. And, of course, she isn't a monster.

Oh, what's this? Something I found in an old email? Tee hee!



She's one of the most giving, loving people I've ever met. She'll do anything for anyone.

And the sad part is, from what I can tell, there are those in her circle who don't appreciate her. Take advantage, in fact.

But she keeps on doing and loving anyway.

Because that's the kind of person she is.

She's filling in at the paper this month, not because she needs the money (which she probably does) or because she loved working here so much (which she definitely didn't.) She's here to help me and the GM, Shirley, because she knows what a strain it would be on us without the regular graphic artist here.

She loves to bake birthday cakes - in fact, she's made herself one this year. Strawberry. MMMM!

And she's making me a Boston creme pie for mine next week (did I mention, we're exacty three years and 51 weeks apart?), because she's got a new recipe she wants to try out. Even though I've never eaten BCP, I'm sure it'll be delicious. And vegan. And not-at-all points friendly.

For her birthday this year, I secured an official coach's notebook. From the coach of the Memphis Grizzlies. Autographed by the Grizzlies.

Yep. Those Grizzlies. I had to fight a little old lady for it. (No, really, I did. And seeing my obvious superiority, she gave up.) And if I see it on ebay, I'm gonna kill her.

Amanda's had a dream for years to go to England. So she saved her money, quit her job, and went.

Just like that. Like it was just that easy to go to the other side of the world, all by yourself.

She's the best Aunt Manda in the world. And Anna Marie should know - she's got two of them.

Everyone needs an Aunt Manda.

She's such a great Aunt Manda, that as soon as she found out I was pregnant with Anna Marie, (and we lived 500 miles apart) she started trying to figure out how to be with us when the kid was born. So she spent nearly a year with us, going to school at the University of South Carolina at Aiken. And all she ended up with from the experience was $6,000 in student debt.

And the first year of Anna Marie's life. Totally worth it in her book - being there in the room when her first (and so far only) neice was born. Being able to take the baby's very first photograph, in which the 15-minute-old looked straight into the camera lens. It was love at first sight for both of them.

It was Amanda, not me, who chronicled Anna Marie's first year of life in pictures. Without her, I wouldn't have a completed first-year scrapbook, but a bunch of empty pages. Because I was in no shape that whole year to do anything constructive.

I'm sorry about all the time I wasted, when we were younger, being awful to her. And the occasional awful moment we have now. I'm just glad that we've been able to have a relationship as adults.

Because my sister is one of the coolest people I know.