What a HOT Grannie!

Today's post is dedicated to my BFF Jeanette. It's her b'day! She just turned 34 years old AND she also just became a GRANDMOTHER!!! That is just plain crazy.

Granted, it's not a blood grandchild. It's her step daughter's child. But still.

Here is a picture of the cute little guy (Lyndon):

Now, back to my BFF...

GG (what I call her) and I have been best friends since we were 7 or 8 years old. Our wards combined and suddenly I had another girl my age in my class at church! I was thrilled. We've been BFFs ever since. We never went to the same school since my ward boundaries were about a 10 mile radius and she lived about 8 miles away. But we had sleepovers at each other's houses nearly every weekend. We would spend all night chatting and setting up our elaborate Barbie houses. First the furniture made of blocks my mom let me paint myself--rainbows for one room, pink with glitter for another, blue with criss crosses, and green with polka dots--just like any normal house's furniture. Then we would lay out all the clothes and accessories and take turns choosing items until they were all divied up. By then it would be midnight and my mom would make us go to bed. In the morning we would eat breakfast, get dressed, and finally settle in to PLAY with the Barbies, only to have Jeanette's mom call and say it was time to come home. I'm not sure we ever actually played Barbies. But the setting up was always fun.

When we got older, we got interested in boys. I made the rounds with the meager selection of guys in our ward while Jeanette stayed steady with the same one guy, Rick, from age 13 until sometime during our freshman year of college, I think. The funny thing about him was that he shared the same last name as her, just different by one letter in the spelling. We always joked about how she wouldn't even have to change her name when they got married.

During college GG and I still stayed in contact despite being seperated by a few hundred miles of Utah and Idaho wilderness (she was at Rick's and I was at BYU). We took our spring break to L.A. together. We visited each other as much as we could. And at the holidays we drove the 1600 miles to and from Michigan together. One car, two drivers, 24 hours, straight through.

GG and I had lots of fun adventures in college. There was the time we were driving cross country and my cruise control got stuck at 85. I couldn't get it to release. We were weaving in and out of heavy city traffic, unable to stop or downshift my car. We thought we were going to die. And then there was the time when we and a few friends went to Toronto to party. I won't say what happened, but I will say that to this day I still can't stand the smell of tequila. There was the time that her then boyfriend took her and me and our other two roommates to Las Vegas to propose to her. We all knew what was going on, but she didn't. You should have seen her face when she pulled the ring out of that big tray of peanut butter cups that room service rolled in. Then there was the time that I was driving over to Jeanette's house the summer before we went to college. Suddenly my car was surrounded by 6 or 7 police cars who boxed me in and pulled guns on me. But that's another story for another day.

Now my dearest deary lives in the red rocks of St.George. When I drive through, I try to stop and say HI and when she comes up here, she usually gives me a call. She has 4 kids and 4 step kids, I have two. We're busy. But even though we only see each other once or twice a year, we'll always be best friends forever.

LOVE YOU, GG! HAPPY B'DAY!

The top picture is of my 7th birthday party. That's Jeanette, bottom center. I'm in the back on the left with the long braids and stupid expression. The bottom picture is our primary class. Jeanette is the shy violet in front. I'm the one with the frizzy hair and the Charles Nelson Riley glasses.

This is Jeanette, probably senior year. The first picture is her showing off her unusually spacious mouth. The second one is her saying, "Promise me you are going to destroy that picture." I promised. But I lied.

This was our ward's youth 50's dance. GG and I are on the right in our poodle skirst doing the twist. I guess we didn't know that the twist hadn't been invented yet.

This is a few of my friends welcoming me back from my year in Germany. Jeanette is in the back row with the infamous Rick. I'm in the middle with the long hair and my mom's outfit on. Ya, that was a bad phase, where I wore my mom's clothes. Desperation is the only explanation.

This is one of the infamous trips to Canada. We had way too much fun.
The bottom picture is Jeantte's wedding, with me as maid of honor.

THE END.