Kindred spirit

There are so many reasons I wish my sister and I lived closer to each other.
For starters, it would save me from 17 hour car rides to visit, but also, so I can watch how Christina, Judah and Benjamin grow into people.
I know I'm biased, but David and Sami have some seriously awesome kids. It gets harder and harder to part every time we see them.
Their budding personalities are already some of my favorites.
Stina, at 11, is one of those rare kids who knows what she likes and doesn't care if it's not cool, something I wish I had learned so early. She's a fan of country music in a sea of Justin Bieber lovers.
She's a very smart girl, which is why I was puzzled when she told me how much she loved the "Twilight" books. I quickly challenged her to read the "Harry Potter" series to see which she preferred.
She quickly challenged me to read the "Twilight" saga. Ugh.
Before she made this request of me, I had tried to read the first book of the series and had to stop after about five pages. I've never read anything that made me want to edit more. If half of the superfluous adjectives were deleted, I would guess the whole book would be about 100 pages long.
Needless to say, I have not been motivated to start reading those books and I didn't expect that Stina would have started reading Harry Potter.
I decided that I would try to pique her interest by knitting her a hat based on one of the movies and giving her a copy of the "Sorcerer's Stone."
I chose a lovely minty green colored bamboo/acrylic yarn to make Hermoine Hearts Ron while driving up for our visit.
Turns out that I am a very slow and unmotivated car knitter. I didn't get much of the hat done by the time we arrived at the Choates'. Fortunately, it didn't matter - she had already read all the books and was half-way through "The Goblet of Fire" on her second time reading through the series.
A girl after my own heart.

She hasn't seen any of the movies, so by the time I finish the hat and send it to her, she may have watched some of them and will appreciate the hat even more - although, if she's anything like most Harry Potter fans, she won't be all too by impressed with all the changes the movies make to the stories.