My little sister Tessa and her friend Ally came to visit for a week. Even though they only left five days ago, I already miss these girls so much. Tessa is like me; her friends are friends forever. She and Ally have been friends since middle school and even though they went to different high schools, they maintained their friendship. I think they’ll be friends forever, especially since most of Tessa’s friends have been her friends since she was a toddler or in kindergarten. We consider them family.

I see a lot of Kimberly in Ally. So does Kim – she calls Ally her “mini.” I’d love to flatter myself and say that Tessa is a lot like me, but the truth is that she’s way freaking cooler. These girls are seriously the coolest teenagers I know.

Random, but I had a dream that they were both smoking cigarettes (!!!) and I was really upset and yelling at them. In the dream, they said, “It’s not a big deal. We’re just being trendy.” I woke up (teary-eyed) and told them about it, making them promise to never smoke or do drugs. The rest of the trip, they kept joking to each other, “Let’s go be trendy!” which was always met with an evil-eye from me, and then buckets of laughs. Do teenagers even use the word trendy? No?