My oldest friend - Melany

Maybe the title should actually be My Longest Friend. Because she isn't my oldest friend in the sense of age, but the friend that I have had the longest. Our Mom's met back when we were just 2 years old. They were friends, so naturally we were friends. And here we are 30 years later... Still friends. She came for a visit recently and brought her family. It was fun to see each other and talk about all the people that we used to know or still keep in touch with.

Here's the two of us:

And our 9 kids... My memories with Melany are many:

• There was the time when we were in Kindergarten together and our teacher had a momentary lapse of judgement and ACTUALLY let us sit next together. We sat there SOOO quietly and SOO nicely as she was rearranging all of the kids so that she wouldn't realize what she had done. Only once she finished, the teacher saw us sitting next to each other and made me move.
• There was another time also in Kindergarten where we were playing in the sandbox with another kids' toy car and buried it somewhere and then couldn't find it. The teacher made us go back out there and look until our mom's came to pick us up and we cried the entire time while sifting through piles of sand.
• There were countless birthday parties, holidays, girls camps and playdates. We used to build entire Barbie cities out in the backyard with roads made from chalk and everything.
• There was the time I was spending the night at her house and there was an earthquake {I'd been threw plenty of earthquakes, but experiencing an earthquake in a two-story was a whole different kind of experience}.
• There was the time my Mom was driving us back to her house and Melany dropped her gum out the car window and we had to go back and get it.
• I still remember having matching red T-shirts that had our names on them.
• Then there was the time that I threw-up at her house after eating several packages of banana now and laters. Then I called home to tell my Mom to come get me and ended up crying on the phone to a guy who I thought was my Dad only to hear, "Look, I don't have any kids." Oops, wrong number.
• There was the time that we thought about quitting going to church because they split the ward right between our two neighborhoods (we were like 6 or 7 years old).
• There was the time we sat on their old couch for what seemed like 8 hours at her next door neighbors garage sale trying to sell the couch, but never did.
• Camping in Yosemite and learning to rock climb. And her Dad driving the wrong way on a one-way road.

I could probably go on and on... 30 years really adds up!