Care Bear All Grown Up

My brother and I have always called my little sister Care Bear, her name is Karrie, and when she was little Care Bears were all the rage. My baby sister turned 30 this week and it is making me feel incredibly old. She was always my little pet when we were growing up and we had a very symbiotic relationship for a number of years until I went away to college. She developed into an amazing person and she is now someone I'm proud to call my friend.

She has her Masters from Tulane University and now runs a program for sex offenders and extremely behaviorally disordered boys. I don't know how she keeps her sanity with everything she has to deal with. She has an amazing sense of humor and a strong sense of self which I admire more than she knows.

I knew hitting 30 was going to be hard on her so I sent her a stuffed turtle from loves2docrafts.etsy.com. For years Karrie "collected" turtles. She would find them on the farm and write their name and a number on their shell and then set them free. My father found a few of them years later with her writing still visible. A few years ago she excitedly told me she a had very spontaneous thing planned for when her good friend came to visit her in 6 months. She was going to get a turtle tattoo on her back. I hated to be the one to tell her if she was planning it 6 months in advance it really didn't count as spontaneous but whatever made her happy.