Family dynamics

Yesterday was "Sister Day."  Lucy and I accompanied Maggie to Reno, ran a few errands, got ice cream at Cold Stone and then raced home to grab jackets, let the dogs and horses out and head to Cuccia's for our dinner reservation.  We spent the entire ride home rocking out to our favorite Disney songs (Mulan, Little Mermaid, Pocahontas) and the Spirit soundtrack.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is an animated film for horse-lovers.  It's the story of a wild mustang stallion who's captured by cowboys and his adventures as he makes his way back home again.  Unlike other animated films, the horses don't talk in this one, something I especially appreciate.  Instead, Spirit's thoughts and feelings are narrated through the songs, which makes for an amazing soundtrack.  So we were remembering the good ol' days as we sang, danced and laughed along with the tunes.

Dinner was fabulous, but by far the best part was reminiscing with my sisters.  There's such an age difference between us that our childhoods were very different and theirs was obviously impacted by Emily's and my older presence.  The way they talk about it, we were close to god-like--Maggie revered me--and for us they were like our baby dolls: fun distractions, we could dress up and usually boss around.  For so many years our relationship was more like that of a mother with her children.  Now the little rug rats are all grown up, they're real people.  Last night I was just hanging out with my sisters and it was so much fun.

We came home from dinner and decided to continue our stroll down memory lane with some old home videos. :)  We laughed pretty hard.  One of my personal favorites was a skit that Maggie and Lucy put together when they were about 11 and 12.  Lucy is the nerdy, studious older sister named Violet who has just graduated from Atlantic College (sister to Pacific University) with "mega cum laude" honors.  She is incapable of having a relationship with anything other than her books, which all have names, by the way.  The biggest, thickest of these is a dictionary named Viola!  ...Anyone else noting the similarities?


Another good one was on our trip to Hawaii when Maggie and Lucy were about 5 and 6.  I think the video speaks for itself so I won't elaborate more.  Just know that this is a pretty typical example of family dynamics in the Wilbanks household: