#17 My Best Friend and One of the Most Fun Years of My Life!

One of my all time favorite pictures of us!

I've been talking about a girl named Amy in a lot of my posts and some of you who didn't know me in my first 25 years might be wondering. "Who is this Amy girl who is in so many of your posts?" Amy White (now Davis) is the best friend I could have ever hoped to have during my growing up years.   As you've seen in several of my posts we were pretty much attached at the hip from middle school until I moved away after college.  I don't have a lot of memories from those years that don't include Amy, and I have loved being able to have a friend with whom I have been able to share so much of my life.  One of Amy's favorite books and my favorite movies, (I haven't read the book and Amy hates the movie) is Anne of Green Gables.  Anne of Green Gables always talks about how she longs for a "bosom friend."  Her heart's one desire is to have a friend with whom she can talk about anything, laugh, and just live life together.  I'm so blessed to have had that with Amy.

Amy and I have made so many great memories together and I have shared many of those in other posts so this post will focus on what I consider probably the most fun year of my life.  (I'm sorry babe if you're reading this I love you and I love our marriage, but judging on scale of "funness" over the whole year, this wins the prize.)  Our sophomore year of college Amy and I got an apartment together.  Neither one of us had gone away to school, we were both attending the Hamilton branch campus of Miami University, but we wanted to have the experience of living on our own.  We rented a small one bedroom apartment in our home town and we had the best year.  Our house became the hangout house.  We would have Tuesday night movie nights with Matt C and Sarah where we watched a movie (I cannot lie we watched American Outlaws a lot) and ate cookie dough like it was ice cream out of bowls.  Matt always thought it was so weird but I did not like double dipping with everyone! Yuck!!  We also had poker night every Thursday where a bunch of our friends would come over for dinner and poker. ( We just played for fun we didn't use real money, only poker chips).

For a 'spoons' tie breaker we had a peach cobbler eating contest.

Those were our "regularly scheduled" hang out nights but people could be found there pretty much anytime.  Like I said it was the hot hang out place. I love some of our random memories, like having Duck Hunt, Tetris and Mario Brother tournaments. Yes, that's right we did have an original Nintendo and it was old school even back then.  We played our old school Nintendo on one of those big old TV's that were surrounded by a wood box.  Remember those? It was a hand me down from my Grandma.  Who needs flat screens when your TV looks like a piece of furniture?  Our dads and Matt and Steve LOVED moving that up and down the stairs for us when we moved in and out.  The TV was so old that we really couldn't even watch TV shows on it as it didn't get reception, we could only watch movies and play nintendo.  I had a smaller 13 inch box TV (with built in VCR) in our room that had bunny ear antennas and we would watch our shows like Friends and Dawson's creek.  Well I think I've done a good enough job convincing you how cool our apartment atmosphere was, I mean a huge old TV that looked like furniture, an original Nintendo, and a 13 inch TV/VCR combo with bunny ears... Well, maybe it was the people who lived there that made our apartment so cool.
 

On Super Bowl Sunday that year Amy and I had no desire to watch the Super Bowl so we got some yummy food and rented a couple of movies.  Our friend Sarah came over and we watched the Brittany Spears movie, Crossroads, Sarah was reluctant but it was awesome and ever since then it has been Sarah's favorite movie of all time! (Love you Sarah, don't hate me for revealing your "secret".)  Another favorite Sunday was when we had a really bad snow storm and church got canceled.  We didn't have very much food in the house but we found enough to make our own enchilada type concoction (that actually tasted really good.) Then Amy's sister Beth came over and we played Nintendo and watched movies all day.

There was a lot of laughter and silliness that year.   I remember making a late night run to Biggs one night and we ended up pushing each other around the parking lot in grocery carts, it was so fun.  Another of my favorite moments weas when we would turn up some of favorite songs and dance on our beds singing at the top of our lungs into our hairbrushes. There were also two marriages that resulted due to the people connecting at our apartment! Neither one was ours but that's okay, I think part of what made that year so great was that neither one of us had a super serious boyfriend.   

Amy's Wedding Day!

Amy and I are not similar in many ways, in fact we're kind of opposites in a lot of areas.  I'm more "left brained" and she is more "right brained".   However, it has been interesting for me to see over the years how the best parts of each of us have rubbed off on the other and have helped us balance out to become better, stronger people.  Its also funny to me that when I look at our husbands, Brian and I think a lot a like and so do Amy and Darin.  I guess opposites do attract in great romances and great friendships.

At my rehearsal dinner with my matron of honor

The best thing about mine and Amy's friendship was that we shared an understood attitude of unconditional grace.  We could share anything with each other and know that the other person would be understanding and loving but when needed we could also call each other out on bad behavior or attitudes. Although Amy and I are different in many ways, we share the most important thing in common, our faith and desire to serve the Lord with our whole lives. Unfortunately that commitment has taken us down paths that keep us five hours a part and I don't get to see her very often, however when we do see each other its the same as it always has been.  Well mostly the same, we can still tell each other anything, that understood grace is still there, and we still laugh a lot, but we don't still go to grocery stores late at night and push each other around in the carts...  At least we haven't in about 9 years but she is coming to see me soon so who knows???

I love you Amy and I'm so thankful for your friendship.  You've been as close to me as any sister I could have had.  I've enjoyed experiencing so many of our important milestones together, graduating high school, going to college, standing next to each other at our weddings, and becoming mothers within a year or so of each other, its all been great!  I'm really looking forward to the day when Landon and Camille get married and we can become in-laws together.  I know its wishful thinking, but as of now things are looking pretty promising!