Happy Birthday to Lou Lou & my LB!

Today is my first best friend's 26th birthday!  Lou Lou has been there for me since before either of us ever had a choice, a step, or a breath.  I treasure the card her parents gave to mine when they first came to visit Kelly baby #3 in the hospital.  Almost every Sunday evening Aunt Ivy & Uncle John wander through the neighborhood to our house and spend hours drinking wine and laughing with my parents.  I love it - because I love them, and I love how much they love my parents, and my parents them, but also because I love looking at what I might someday have with their sweet daughter Elise.  She's become such an amazing wife and great mom.  She's always at ease, or so it seems to me.  Nothing is a competition to her - which is amazing for me as you can guess.  She was once my buddy who suggested skinny dipping and picked roller coasters.  The girl who always felt it was the right night for "Truth or Dare" - even the five and six and seven year old who would watch E.T. with me and then run out into the dark and stare at the woods as long as we could before one of us would scare and run back inside. (There was a stump at the bottom of the hill into the woods that looked exactly like ET!) I got her grounded for rolling around in the dirt pile on a dare.  She's the only person who's ever slapped me across the face.  She was back at my door apologizing a few hours later and the playing picked right back up.  We spent weeks over summer at her grandparents.  Went camping together in high school.  Played basketball together.  Passed notes back and forth right in front of the teacher for years ("Hey, can I borrow your black pen?").  We had countless nicknames. We wrote our first poetry by the same creek. Spent almost every single day and evening together from 4 to 18.  When she first got her license, we'd cruise to O.O. Denny in her parents old Buick, windows down and Counting Crows or Michael Buble flowing through the speakers. 

Now, it's more like monthly get-togethers, but there's nothing like the spot that a childhood best friend holds in your heart - you knew each other through the best and the worst and the dirtiest summer days. You learned to walk, bike, rollerblade and drive together and along the way, you learned how to learn from each other.  Lou Lou, I'm constantly learning from you: how to be gracious and unconcerned about yourself, how to be kind, wise, and still fun.  How to be a great cook, an even greater hostess, and the best of wives and moms.  I love having you as my first and forever best friend!

And to my LB, I just keep thinking about this time last year - and how everything has changed since then.  And yet, nothing has.  You are such an incredible woman.  I hope this entire year is full of the most incredible moments and thoughts and of course, songs!  I love your story.  I love how the Lord moved you and joined you and set your heart on fire.  I've loved our adventures together - at Home Depots and mountain tops!  I'll be your Listening Buddy anywhere.  You're real and true and beautiful, and you could make me laugh for hours!