Old Friends

I actually wrote this post a couple of months ago, but I added a new picture to it this morning, and it changed the date to today.  So feel free not to read it again if you've already read it once.  :-)

On the Saturday evening before Easter, I was lucky enough to get to have dinner with my oldest friend, Angie.  I always feel bad calling her my "oldest" friend, because it's not like she's 95 or anything, but saying "person with whom I've been friends the longest" just takes too much time, so "oldest friend" it is. 

I am three months younger than Angie, and I really think we have been friends since birth.  I think our friendship started in the nursery at church, and I honestly cannot remember a time before we were friends.  Her family moved to Florida sometime around our 5th grade year (I think - it was before middle school, anyway), and I haven't been able to see her very often since then, but we've always kept in touch.  She lives in Washington, D.C., now, with her husband Rob and their beautiful baby girl Natalie (I still can't believe my friends are old enough to have babies - I'm not sure when I'm going to give up and realize I'm not a kid anymore).  Lucky for me, her Dad recently moved back to good old Grainger County, so she will be in town every once in a while visiting him.  Easter weekend was one of those "once in a whiles," and Ben and I had the best time having dinner with her, Rob, and Natalie and just catching up.  It was also the first time I'd had the chance to meet Natalie, and that was amazing.  Beautiful girl with her Mom's eyes, and actually looks very much like her grandmother, Angie's Mom. 

I never realize how much I miss Angie until I get the chance to spend a little bit of time with her and then realize it'll be a while before we get the chance to do it again.  On Easter, I went back through my archives (a.k.a. big boxes of old photos) at Mom and Dad's house and found a bunch of old pictures of us.  I thought she might get a kick out of seeing them, and the rest of you will probably get a kick out of seeing my horrible childhood hair, etc.  So here goes:

A picture of Angie and me enjoying a cold beverage after what I'm sure was a grueling game of Junior Pro basketball (1986).  After all, why else would my hair look like that?

  



Our third grade class picture (1987).  Angie is on the right end of the middle row, and I'm next to her.

A picture from GA Camp (1988):

 

A picture from GA Camp 1989.  According to my handwriting on the back of the picture, this is the last camp we attended together.  It was "hillbilly night," so we were dressed up.  I think it's hilarious that Angie wore a Gators shirt to dress like a hillbilly.  ;-)

A couple of pictures from Dollywood sometime during our middle school years on one of Angie's visits from Florida:

This picture may have been from the same day as the Dollywood pictures, or it may have been from a different visit.  Unfortunately there's no handwriting on the backs of these pictures:

And finally, a picture of us and Angie's beautiful daughter a couple of weeks ago:

Can't wait to see these two (and Rob) again!  Love you, Ang!