On Family, Sisters, and Growing Up

We don't talk about family much on the blog - Shawn comes from a relatively small family and most of my extended family still resides over seas in France, so neither one of us has much family to speak of. Both of our immediate families live just one state over and we make a point to visit on a fairly regular basis, but otherwise, it's just the two of us. So I'm going to dedicate this post to my lovely younger sister who left home on Friday for her first year of college!

sisters being crazy, circa 2005

I am the oldest of three children - five years older than my sister, six years older than my brother. Growing up, I definitely felt the differences in age; the two of them were always very close, but I was always slightly too old to relate to them. They grew up and into their personalities while I was away at college, so I feel like I missed out on that transition from child to mini-adult, the crucial time to be an older sister. When I moved back home after college, they were no longer the childish minds from four years prior - they were developing their own philosophies on life and I could actually talk to them as peers - something I'd waited years for! And now, my little sister is starting a new journey on her own, and I'm sitting in the sidelines again, waiting for the moment to be a big sister if she needs me to be.


for reference, a more recent picture of my sister

She was kind enough to come visit last week so that we could hang out one more time before she left on Friday. We had planned on driving into center city and going thrifting, and then bringing home our finds and altering them on my sewing machine - I had looked into it and written down a few thrift stores to check out, and that's exactly what we set out to do. We parked near the first store (Circle of Hope Thrift), only to find an empty shell of a building where it was supposed to be. So we got back in the car and drove up towards the next store (Philly Vintage), parked in (what we later realized was a really pricey) lot, and walked over to the store's location... only to find yet another empty building! Slightly disheartened and running short on time by this point, we decided to abandon our plans and just walk around the city to kill some time and hopefully stumble upon something interesting. And stumble we did!


Second Time Around thrift store; picture borrowed from yelp.com

With fifteen minutes left before needing to be back at the parking lot, we finally found a thrift store. Second Time Around, to be exact (the irony is just too much). We just browsed, since we had to keep it quick, but this is definitely a find! The selection is beyond amazing and the prices are decent (I hate consignment shops that take themselves too seriously and charge nothing less than $30 for crappy old clothes...) If we had no time limit, we definitely would have been there a while and gone home with a few pieces. There's always next time!


yummy gelato from Capogiro!

Another great find - Capogiro Gelato. One of my co-workers used to work there and always praises them, so when we happened to stumble upon it, there was no way I could just walk past without stopping in for a taste! And taste we did! Like any good gelato place, they let you sample as many flavors as you want, and they let you pick two different flavors for the small cups - I settled on Nutella and Banana Rhum, and my sister got Dark Chocolate and Lime Sorbetto. Both were delicious, and gelato was definitely a good choice over the coffeeshop we were originally going to seek out.

Even though the day did not go as planned (when do plans ever go right?), it was still a whole lot of fun and I got to spend it all with my sister. I appreciate times spent with my siblings more now than I ever did - funny how that works. And now we have a few ideas on where to go next time she visits!

Do you have any siblings? How close are you in age, and do you feel age makes a difference in your relationship with them? Tell us a story about growing up in your family! Or a story about a day that didn't go as planned.