On Les Mis and my little sister

This is not the long book review I know you're all waiting for with bated breath (someday I WILL get around to writing it). This is taking a moment to say thank you to all those little siblings out there, especially my own. Being a younger sibling myself, and a good deal younger than most of my friends, looking up to people is part of my everyday existence, and not just in the literal sense of being shorter than the rest of my family. But eight years ago I was blessed with someone who would look up to me, rotten older sister that I sometimes am. As I'm getting older, and Sarah and Daniel as well, days seem to have gotten shorter, and everything else I have to do longer. Even the weekends are sometimes taken up finishing school assignments and other things that I should have been doing during the week instead of writing in my blog. Remembering what it was like to have to beg to be played with, I try to give some of that time to Genna, but sometimes life just doesn't cut the cloth to fit my coat. Or however that saying goes. In any case, the lemons it gave me don't always make Genevieve happy, so I tried to find something else to do with her that wouldn't take the hours we used to be able to spend together, but that she would still enjoy. Then, my Dad had the brilliant idea to listen to the Les Miserables soundtrack on the way to Hillsdale one day. I was raised on the very same CD's myself, and having just seen the movie it was nice to refresh my memory. But unbeknownst to me at the time, it gave me a lot more than just memories - it gave me my answer to the dilemma. As the days turned into weeks, I would come downstairs and hear Genna listening to the soundtrack on the radio (I swear, she knows the songs better than I do now). I found bits of time to come and sing them with her, and then to teach her the movie version. We would sing the songs together, and discuss the differences between the Broadway and movie, and the characters. Before long, I realized that Genna wasn't just enjoying my company - I was enjoying hers. We started not just to sing the songs, but to act them out and to add our own comments, and then the accents of the characters. Sometimes I would sing the harmony, and sometimes she would sing the Broadway version of the song as I simultaneously sang the movie - which usually ended in terrible cacophony, but it's still fun.
In any case, I was finding out along the way that I had someone who actually seemed to understand why I love the songs so much. She was always ready to listen to me as I went on a five minute rant about how each walk of the people who came out at the Oscars performance pertained to their specific character, and is just as ready to act out said walk with me, and laugh at me when I use my "fan girl voice" (only a few people would know what THAT is...). It takes about ten minutes to sing our favorite songs, and through something as simple as singing them when I wash the dishes after dinner with her in the kitchen, I feel a bond growing between us that really doesn't have anything to do with singing the songs themselves. I don't feel like she's eight years younger than me when we're able to grab our few precious moments of singing time together - I feel like she's just a sister - and one who understands me better than a lot of people who are older than I am. So, thank you, Genna. 
"Music has a way of expressing what words cannot." - Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. Seemed appropriate. 
-Rhian