Dear McKensie Naomi Smith Wilkinson

Dear McKensie,

I cherish your dedication to continue to check my empty and vacant blog. I'm pretty sure you are the only one that still checks this. I don't even pay any attention to it. And that's what I love about you. I love that you find significance in things I devalue.

I feel like there isn't much I could say about you or to you that I haven't already repeated about a thousand times. I feel like a proud older sister. I remember when I first met you, and I was 22 and you were 18. I remember thinking how immature you were but how full of life you were; I vowed to be a little more like that because I was way too stuffy at that point in my life. We didn't have much in common but you reached out to me and made me feel needed and wanted. I can never thank you enough for that. As time grew I learned to relax and a bit and you matured a bit and somewhere over the years we've met perfectly in the middle. You've been my go to person all along. Remember the time my parents and sister came into town and they yelled at me and made me feel like crap? I called you up late at night and I still remember walking into your dining room and you pulled me in close as I cried and cried and cried into your chest.  Anytime I needed a ride to the airport I didn't even have to question who would take me. You packed my bags with extra goodies to enjoy on the plane and you always updated me with the recent goings on.

I can't believe how much you've grown up and gone through. I feel honored to be a spectator in your life. Remember when I got into your car and you had grapes in a paper towel from the breakfast your mom had packed you? You had spent the day driving around instead of going to school. And the time I walked to your work from my house because it was just across the street? We played on the white board changing your name to whoever's last name you had been on a date with at the time. Just a few short weeks later I remember you telling me about this boy Matt who had asked you out. I had just been on a date with a boy named Matt a few days prior and worried it was the same one. It was not. You raved about this "tall dark and handsome" man who came to pick you up in a HONDA!!! You were so worried it was going to be a car you hated but it wasn't.  I watched you fall in love with him, I was there during your bridal portraits, and I was there in the room the day you were sealed. I was mad as hell when you took 17 hours to come out of the temple after your sealing on that bitter cold January day and vowed to make everyone wait in the cold for me if I ever got married. The moment you came out of the temple all annoyance disappeared and I loved you more than ever for marrying a wonderful man in the temple. I couldn't believe my ears when you told me you were pregnant and I couldn't believe my eyes the first moment I laid them upon Henry. He was the most perfect child I had ever seen.

Kens, you are my sister. I sometimes sit at work and want to shove all my papers in the air and walk out to go to your house and lay on the ground and let Henry spill my water everywhere and get into my purse as we chat about everything and anything. I have NO clue how we never ever EVER run out of things to talk about.

In the past few months since G has passed away I freak out a lot more internally. I'm constantly questioning my mortality and that of those around me. Please don't ever leave! I'm pretty sure I could never recover from that. I'd have to move states and start all over again and pretend you aren't a part of my everyday life. Even then I don't think it would fix anything. You, your little family, and your entire family, are such a light in my life.

I feel like the stupidest person writing all of this. Does it even make any sense?

All I want to say is thank you for being there. Thank you for making me feel loved and important on times when I felt no one else in the world felt that way about me, including myself. You are the best friend anyone could ask for and definitely one of the best sisters.

you are the: sugar sugar, sugar plum, love you more no battle, avril lavenge kind of great.