Emily

Despite what Emily may say, we do have pictures of her!

But, this is what you will normally see of her.

Em's a great photographer, and has a knack for getting pics of me at the times when I least want my picture taken. She gets it from Dad.

This rare image was captured when Emily was outside of her normal habitat, hence the picture itself and the wary expression that the Emily only gets when she feels threatened.
This is one of my favorite pics she's ever done. It looks spooky. But then, ever since Copper got stuck in the trap, the girls fell off Peaches and strangers have ventured up there, the 98 acres have seemed a little spooky. I'll always remember the time when we girls were poking around in the abandoned barn, at the back where you can't see the front half of the barn and heaps of old dog food cans are stacked precariously, when we heard a bump.

"From ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, Good Lord deliver us!"
After an awful pause, where no one wants to say, "What was that?", yet well knowing that we all heard it, we pushed and shoved past each other, all wanting to be the one in the middle of the group and high-tailed it out of there!

But she's got some really cool shots...

She's always been a goof; the group comedian and the giggle-box. She could fake crying really well when she was little, a trait which we all envied, and she was proud of her buck teeth and skinned up knees. No joke, most of her life, she has had band-aids on her knees.

Yes, this is what she normally looks like. LOL!

Like Cait and I, she was horse-crazy, and loved all kinds of animals. Although she wouldn't tolerate being dragged through the lilac bushes by a rabbit on a harness like a certain older sister, she let her hamster roll around the house in it's plastic ball, bump-bumping crazily down the stairs once or twice.
Funny thing how we were so similar when we were little, and now... Em is the crafty person who can sew and decorate cupcakes and do, well, crafty things with paper and glue. Cait's the agriculturally talented girl who keeps her little farm running and expanding. And me? I'm the weird one who likes to write, read, fix things and do odd jobs. Literally, odd.

A lot of people have asked if Em and I are twins, which to us is strange because we don't think that we look that much alike. Friends who still get us mixed up or ask if we're twins, or ask who's older will usually get a reply like, "No, she's just my stunt-double." or "Yes, we're twins, but I'm fourteen months older."

She learned to play the piano and design sewing patterns all by herself.

She's picked up on the artsy kind of stuff, probably from all the baby showers and the one or two wedding showers we've helped with.

She's learning Russian in anticipation of perhaps some future mission trips to Russia (is that any crazier than wanting to go to Afghanistan?!).

She can fix up the clothes that need altering and knows how to use the scary terms like "Bias cut" and "French seams".

Where would I be without Em to boss around?I'd lose my partner-in-crime, my masseur, my random-joke generator, I'd have no one to talk the ears off about helicopters, mission trips, sunglasses and my literary attempts.

Worst of all, if she ever goes away, I'll lose the one person I can get to kill the evil fuzzy spiders for me (I can handle, and even like rodents, but I'm a total coward when it comes to spiders).

Even if Em lives to be a hundred, I'll never be able to get her age and her birthday straight. We've teased her about her age so much that I think she's always two years behind me instead of one.