the one about my beautiful family

so we took family pictures the other day! they turned out awesome. we just used my camera, a rebel t3, and my sister's boyfriend took them and afterwards we edited them. i'm in shock of families who aren't close to one another. that would kill me. my siblings are my best friends. my parents are my role models and my strengths. they are so inspiring! i love it. i'm so blessed. i can't stress that enough! how lucky i am to have such an amazing strength in my life. my parents taught us at a young age how important our relationship with each other would be. at first we didn't understand, "our siblings would be our best friends" 5+ years ago i could've swore my siblings were my siblings, not my closest friends. but they truly are now. we enjoy being with each other, we help each other, we give each other advice, and we tease each other. we have a great time. ok so my sister is an awesome writer (her blog is here), journalism is her major and she writes for a local newspaper. because she can word things so much better than i can i just chose to pull a clipping of an article she wrote and let her explain this topic a little better. so give it a read.
p.s. i am the little sister she is referring to :)

". . .These parents knew the importance of family, the importance of sibling unity. One wouldn’t think that sharing a room would make a big difference but, I guarantee, it does.

Before I moved into my first apartment, I’d never once had my own room. I’d never even had my own bed. For as long as I can remember I have shared one with my younger sister and I have loved it. Allow me to correct that. I have usually loved it but, being human, there were times when I was younger, perhaps in elementary or junior high, when I wanted my own room. There was a point at which I moved down into the basement…for five minutes. Most of the time, however, having my sister as my roommate was wonderful. There is something about whispering late into the night that builds a relationship. There is something about laughing and crying and supporting one another in the loneliest hours that creates a dimension, an added love for that person. There’s something about learning to share everything that you own whether you want to or not. Something about learning how to be less spiteful and more forgiving. Something about learning to compromise in order to improve your living situation that forces you to grow as a person. There’s something about having less that somehow offers more.

In a world where most have their own bedroom, their own bathroom, their own computer, it’s refreshing to share. It’s gratifying to have a friendship that has been built, not on gossip or even slumber parties, but on learning to live with one another and learning to love it.

That’s why, now that we are both going to college and have the chance to live apart, we are choosing to live together. We are, once again, sharing a bedroom. Not because we have to but because we want to, because we missed it.  

Those young parents have something figured out, something that my own parents figured out long ago.  Sharing a room is going to build that sisterhood in a way nothing else ever could. Having too many children in a house far too small for everyone to have their own bedroom or bathroom, well that was perhaps one of the greatest things that my parents ever did for me." 

and now a couple of the pictures to top it off. :)