She’s the blonde one on the right who looks nothing like me and is insanely proud of being a couple of inches taller than me.

Like most siblings, we had a lot of fights growing up. But we also had a lot of fun. When I went to preschool, she cried hysterically about how she wanted her “Kaykie.” We used to play with our gigantic collection of stuffed animals in my room on Saturday mornings. We’d play out in the backyard, inventing all kinds of crazy games (one of which involved pretending to be vultures). We share a kind of weirdness in our personalities that only siblings can understand.

As we got older, we got to be a different kind of friends. We talked about boys, vented about people at school, complained about teenage issues. We hung out by going to the movies or watching The X-Files together instead of playing in the backyard. We made fun of the characters on Law & Order: SVU. Eventually, she decided to go to BC, where she was a freshman when I was a senior, and I loved having her on the same campus as me. She was in the honors program and on the swim team, met a great boyfriend, and continued being her awesome self.

Today she turns twenty-five. I still call her by the embarrassing family nicknames she’d kill me for revealing here. She’s in her second year at Villanova Law School, where she’s involved with student government. She’s still with the same boyfriend. She trips over everything in her path, but always gets right back up and laughs at herself. She loves puns, Martha Stewart’s recipes, and Popsicles. She’s still adorable and hilarious, and I miss having her in the same city as me.

Happy birthday to the best little sister ever. I love you.