52 Blessings - Special Edition

This is gonna be a double decker, since I missed last Sunday. I have a good excuse though - I was out of the country and all.

"New Friends"

I think this is definitely appropriate, considering last Sunday we were road tripping with our new friends Brandon and Emily. It's tough making new friends. Back in college, you're surrounded by people your age and it isn't terribly difficult to meet people you are compatible with, since you already have one thing in common - school. But when you're out in the "real" world, it is hard to find people who are in the same place as you and share common interests and all that. It's especially tough to find a "couple" friend that both you and your husband like! That is why I feel fortunate to have made the friends I have made up here. The two most notable friends I feel so fortunate for are Emily and Ann. I don't know what I do without these gals! (And I hope they are reading this so they know just how highly I think of them!)

Emily is special because she helps me strive to be a nicer person. I swear, she is probably the nicest person I know. While I sit there crowd-watching and saying things like "What was that person thinking when she got dressed this morning?!?" Emily finds something nice to say about that person. (Yeah, sometimes this is quite intimidating.) But she genuinely is a sweet and thoughtful person who gives of herself unselfishly. I think of her as a female version of Tim sometimes! And she has great taste in music. On our trip, we were listening to her ipod tunes and I think you can tell a lot by a person's taste in music. Her tunes were tunes I would put on my ipod. Compatibility.

And I love my Ann. She is also a children's librarian who just had twin girls. We can talk shop, we can talk girl talk, we can talk about anything. I just wish I could see her more often. We met while working together at one of the libraries I used to work at and we shared an office. It's so nice having a friend to work with! It makes the day go by so much faster. We still get to hang out every now and then and we try to keep in contact by email. She always sends me the funniest emails. She's so great.

Part 2 - "Old Friends"

This post has potential of being extremely long... Old friends are irreplaceable. The history I have with my cherished old friends are memories I'll carry with me forever. It's like that song you sing in girl scouts: "Make new friends but keep the old... One is silver and the other gold." As cheesy as that sounds, I have a few sister-friends that I cherish. I'm just gonna talk about three of them in this post... Christie, Rachel, and Celeste.

Christie and I have a long history. She and I met in college, and truth be told, she didn't like me because I had long hair! (There was more to it than that, but that was the icing on the cake I think.) When we finally became friends, we were pretty inseparable. Isn't it funny how two people who have the potential to be such good friends can be so intimidated of each other? Well, Christie and I have come a long way since then! She and her hubby Jeremy are one of our closest sets of friends. She is probably my most thoughtful friend and she is one of the best listeners in the whole world! If I ever need undivided attention (just ask Tim, I need attention a lot), I call my Christie girl.

Celeste is my good buddy and my comic relief! I don't know anyone else in the whole world who can make me laugh like Celeste. Like Ann, Celeste and I met while working together at a library in TN. She made the day go by so quick by being such a breath of fresh air. She'd come up with incredible pranks and the best stories. I honestly just love listening to her. She's like nobody I've ever known. She lives in TN, so I don't get to see her very often, but I am thrilled whenever I have an email in my inbox from her. I think she is the coolest.

And finally, there's Rachel. Rachel and I ARE sisters. (Well, not flesh and blood, but in every other way.) As far as history, Rach and I grew up together, a couple of houses apart. We played Barbies together, we've cried together, we were girl scouts together, we did everything together. And even when we kind of grew apart in middle school, we grew back together again. We tend to do that. It's what sisters do. Rach was away for these past couple of years in South Africa, working as a missionary. And while it was hard, not being able to talk on the phone much and not seeing her, we survived it and now we're growing back together. Just like sisters do. I love my sister and I look forward to us twining our vines back together.

Well, that was a doozy! If you made it through that whole post, you get a gold star. Seriously, this is for you...