Another Sister In The Spotlight

Internet, meet Kate.

Vital Statistics

Favorite Foods: mom's chicken noodle soup and breadsticks, pineapple, otter pops, BBQ chicken sandwiches.
Favorite Color: Crater Lake Blue
Future Plans: graduate from high school, go to college at BYU, get married in the temple, have a family, oh, and I will graduate from college somewhere in there.
If I gave you $100 what would you do with it: spend it on some Birkenstock Sandals at Journey's or save it for my dream car (a stick-shift Jeep Wrangler!) Editor's Note: Kate, if you drive a Jeep in high school, you will be spoiled. And do you know what happens to spoiled children? They start to stink, because they are rotten. And not even your Brown Sugar & Fig body lotion will cover up the stench. Keep that in mind when you're putting around the high school parking lot in a used Buick.
Hobbies: running, soccer, being with friends and family, texting, music, swimming, tanning, sleeping, driving.
Nick Name: Katie-bug, or just Bug.

Kate's the fourth child in my family, my fourteen (almost fifteen!) year old little sister. I think she's irresistibly witty and talented and smart and funny and gorgeous. Apparently the crawling things of the earth find her irresistible, too. One night K was lounging in the living room and started feeling a tickling in her (ahem!) cleavage area. Assuming it was a detached hair, she did the familiar-to-all-females, hand-swipe-between-the-boobs to remove it. The tickling continued. She performed another hand swipe, but to no avail. Finally, she pulled her shirt away from her chest to see what was going on in there and lo and behold! A BIG, chubby, black cricket was resting in the dark, quiet security at the bottom of her camisole shelf bra, right between her bosoms! In a terrified tornado of clothing removal Kate went from completely clothed to nearly naked in world-record-worthy time, while the whole family looked on, aghast with surprise. Needless to say, the entire cricket species has fallen from Kate's favor; I pity the summertime serenader who ignorantly "boings" into her habitat as he will have unwittingly consigned his unfortunate soul to an ugly and vengeful death.

But as long as you aren't divided into head, abdomen, and thorax, and don't creep about on multiple legs, you're likely to find Kate's company quite amiable and amusing. I'd go so far as to say that she is one of the all around greatest people on earth to hang out with.

Here's why:

• She's funny. And spunky.

(Silly, too.)

• But she knows when it's time to be serious. And she's great at serious.

• She's also great for conversation. Even at (almost) fifteen, she just gets so many things. Very insightful and wise, that girl is. We can talk seamlessly for hours (literally) at a time.

• Kate loves her some junk food! If you want to make a run for the Border, go to Dairy Queen for a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup blizzard, or get a Dancing Elephant Shake at Melello's -- she'll be in your passenger seat and changing the channel on the car stereo to find some good tunes for the ride, faster than you can say "Slurpees, anyone?"

• She loves, luh-hu-huuvs music, too. She's my go-to gal when I'm desperate for a new song. And she has apparently inherited some of her older brother's delightfully eclectic musical tastes. A Katie-bug Mix might have a little Tim 'n' Faith, some Keith Urban, some Furgie, some Nellie Furtado, and always something old school like a little Bonnie Raitt or Chicago thrown in there, too.

• She's a sweetheart of an aunt to Henry. Whenever he sees a teenaged-ish girl he always points excitedly and calls her, "Kate!"

• She is a fantastic work out partner; run, walk, water-aerobics; you name it, she's willing. And you've probably never seen anything sexier than Kate's legs -- Whoa, mama! Hottie-hot-hot! I think it's from all of the running she does, up and down the soccer field and around the track. And the gene pool was kind to her, as well.

• Kate has also become, (in recent years,) my fashion/hair/wardrobe consultant. We have a standing agreement that if I'm ignorantly commiting a glaring fashion faux pas, she has the right--the responsibility, to:

1. Intervene.

2. Remove the bedraggled threads from my person. And...

3. Get me to the nearest reputable retailer to find suitable replacements.

She's so much more astute about "coolness" than I was at her age. I literally have a picture of myself during the winter break of my freshman year of high school in which I am wearing brown, open-toed clod-hopper sandals. And white tube socks. Yep, sandals and socks! That was the extent of my hopelessness in the fashion arena at that point in my life. Not pretty folks. Not pretty at all.

Luckily, she could see through my fashion foibles and we forged a pretty sweet bond of sisterhood, even with ten years between us.

K, some of my happiest memories of all, are ones that we've made together. I love your spunky, carefree disposition. And the way you work like a whirling dervish to achieve your goals. And how you let me use your chi-chi hair straightener that cost more than my first car (wink!) And the delicate way that you perceive how other people are feeling and how you gently offer your special brand of comfort and love. And how you cried at my wedding for fear that I'd get so carried away in the smitten land of Newly Wedded-ness that I'd forget to remember you and love you. K, there is a greater chance that I'll grow a third eye ball in the middle of my forehead than that I'd ever forget to love you. I can't help but adore you, it's as visceral as the need for Peanut Butter Cup Blizzards at midnight.

Love you to the big ol' Texas moon and back...

A bajillion times,

Embalina