Happy Birthday to my best pal, Lisa!!

I am over a week slow writing this tribute to my sister, Lisa, but it still needs to be done! Lisa, AKA: Leathal, AKA Greasa, celebrated her 23rd birthday on June 15th! We are sort of the second family in the Hansen family. (Five and half years separate me and the next oldest sibilng!) Because of this, this duo has been pals since chubby Lisa Lou came into the world! (When we were little, we used to joke that it looked like she stole my food and ate it!)



Oh there have been good times and there have been bad, but through it all she is by far my best friend! A few of my fondest? memories include the time we thought I had broken Lisa's arm because I hit her so hard with a shoe, or when I blamed Lisa for my car battery being dead because SHE hadn't noticed there was a light on, or when I tattled on her to my mom (when we were teenagers) because she swore at me. (She DOES have quite the potty mouth :)!!) Or the time I slapped her across the face during a basketball game because she didn't box out, or when I had the name on her soccer sweatshirt changed because mine already said "Hansen" and she wasn't "worthy" to wear the name yet, or how I used to go in and bug her when she was asleep just so I could hear her talk all crazy and delirious like, or how I am now posting this AWESOME picture of her on my blog...



.....Wow! I am so lucky she is still my friend! :) Truly though we have had some amazing memories together! One of my favorite memories ever was the opportunity we had to play basketball together in high school. Since then it has been fun to play together in city leagues, pick up ball, and we both enjoyed seeing each other play in college! (She is an amazing basketball player. To the outside eye it may look like she doesn't even look before she flings the ball up, but that is her SWEET move and it ALWAYS swishes through the net! She is AWESOME even still, 2 years removed from her college days.)



And there is no one else I would rather call now just to chat with when I am bored, lonely, or have something exciting to share! I loved our late night chats growing up; I love that we can relate to each other on so many levels; I love how she can make me laugh and how she laughs SO loud! (She is so stinkin funny!) I love how she is so REAL, BLUNT, LOUD, and HONEST! She tells it like it is! I love how she sends me text messages when she has mullet sightings or sees knights holding court in the park, or just plain sends me the most random text messages ever that ALWAYS make me smile or laugh. Lisa really is amazing in so many ways and so beautiful. (Truth be told, I covet her hair, her eyes, her bball skills, her gutsiness, and her humor!) I love her so much! I just wanted to let her know that! Now nothing can better illustrate the good times Lisa and I have together than a little story from when I recently went to Utah:

We decided to take Jack and Lisa's new puppy Gordo to the Willow Park Zoo and yes she named her puppy Gordo because he is fat and she liked him the best out of the litter because he is a bully like her....That is Lisa for you! Anyway, we pretended not to see the "No Pets Allowed Sign" as we entered the gates. (And just for the record, other kids at the zoo were more interested in Gordo than the other animals. Maybe that is why cute pets aren't allowed....) Anyway, as we walked around we noticed a couple of turtles in some very dangerous, life threatening, and precarious positions.....so what do Lisa and I want to do? Well of course save our hard little shelled friends on the other side of the chain link fence. So we found a stick and flipped over one turtle and boosted another one back to safety that was stuck between the fence and a rock, but then right after completing our heroics a park worker came by and said rather beastly, "Don't tell me you have a dog in here." He didn't buy our story of saying he was just a wee puppy and we didn't know and it was a hot day so we couldn't leave him in the toasty car...The krusty man told us to leave and come back another time without the dog. Rude! Lisa and I did get a kick out of our adventures at the park! Those are the kind of memories I create with Leathal! Here are some pictures from recent visits to Utah of Lisa, including our park adventures! Lisa, I love you tons! Happy late Birthday!