Happy Birthday, Gracie Grace!

I can't even begin to tell you how crazy-intense-busy-crazy this week has been, but ...

My beautiful niece Grace turned 5 years old!

So, in lieu of a bunch of nonsensical writing (that's being reserved for the assignments I'm working on), here's a photo.  Words could never express how much this beautiful little girl means to me ... 

***UPDATE***

Okay fine, even when I'm crazy busy I can't resist writing a little something about my niece.  So here it goes.

Dear Gracie Grace,

I don't know if you'll even remember this when you're older, but when you were two years old I came and stayed at your house for five months while your mommy was sick.  The two of us would play and laugh and scream and cry and eat and doze together.

You would say the silliest things.  If I asked you what sound a rooster made, you'd say, "Chockadoodoodoodoodoo!"

We made up the "Beep Beep!" dance.

We played with makeup.

We ate grilled cheese sandwiches and took walks around the neighborhood.

You insisted that every color was either yellow or blue until I repeated all the other colors so many times, you finally got annoyed and learned them too.

People would ask me how I was doing and I'd say it was so hard to see my sister so sick ... but that I was so lucky to get to spend all my days with this beautiful, silly, funny, smart little girl.  And I would say that I never had any idea that it was even possible to love someone so, so, so much.

The half a year we spent together was the most important and fulfilling time of my life and though the circumstances that brought us together sucked, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world.

You are smarter than any adult I know and I hope that you realize you're smart and you use it to your advantage as you grow.  Because the thing is, you also happen to be gorgeous -- so much so, you may be tempted to rely on your looks as you get older.

But you better not, because you've got the golden ticket with that brain of yours.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain."

That's going to be you, Gracie Grace -- you are so smart and you will be able to do ANYTHING you set your mind to.  You'll trick people into thinking things come easily, but under the surface you're going to work very, very hard.  

How do I know all this?  Because I know YOU and you are my favorite person in this entire universe and I couldn't imagine my life without you.

Happy Birthday, you sweet, sweet girl.

Love, Tay