My Best Friend When I was 16 {Day 6 Spring Forward}

As I think back to my 16 year old self I remember having a few best friends! I am sure I will blog about each of my special friend's at some point definitely. I am soo blessed to have an incredible group of lifetime friends.
The one that sticks out in my mind is Mandy around the age of 16. We became fast friends around that age (grade 9) and became accountability partners. As I look back at our days of studying the bible and praying for each other I realize now how that played a crucial part in how our friendship is today because of the bonding time we had back then. I know God placed Mandy in my life during a difficult time in my life and she proved to be a huge blessing to me and still continues to be to this day.
Here are a few memories I have of our wonderful friendship.

• Precious times of Bible study for youth group, particularly Dorcus stands out in my mind :)
• Watching Brigadoon in my trailer parked in the driveway at night and my Grandma coming over and scaring us! (Actually, I cannot believed she did that! haha. My Grandma came over and dragged herfingernails across the screen to purposely scare us! haha, I almost forgot about that.)
• Mandy wearing overalls, many layers, sparkly gel and clips in the shape of ducks, modrobes and braces yet was adored by all.
• WAAMS. I can't even remember the details of this "game" we invented...it was very strange and we got our best friends in on it at one girl's bonding night at church.All I can remember is it wasFUN and there was ransom notes and yellow raincoats involved.
• Having tea at my Grandma's house and dressing up in sparkly fabric my Grandma had lying around and standing in the window while her brother and other boys picked us up for some youth event in Mandy's family's van..(oh dear, forget what they used to call it something like the beast, but that's Bethany's name)
• Laughing and Giggling uncontrollobly about nothing at a girl's youth group sleepover. A few girl's were very annoyed by us and ended up leaving in the early hours of the morning. Sorry.
• Singing Sound of Music songs
• Playing "skid" in highschool during lunch
• Always eating lunch together
• Working together at Fabricland and having an ongoing "remnants race" (see who could make the most remnants in one shift)
• Creating our band called Remnants 2.0 or something like that and buying matching sweaters for our band!
• English class in Gr. 9 where our friendship began. I can only remember something about socks. haha :)
• History class presentations. We were partners and had the best presentations (in my opinion).
• made puppets and recorded a play on cassette about the bourgesoie, clergy and...proletariat or something like that (I don't really remember if those are correct) We were studying the french revolution I believe. We set up a puppet stage and had our sock puppets that represented each class and pressed play on the tape player while we used our hands to move the puppets. EASIEST presentation EVER and we got a great marks!
• Our presentation about the industry of cotton, I have no idea other than we must have been learning about slavery and that is how the cotton came about but we passed around cotton balls to the class.
• Making a children's book about Napoleon and dedicating it to our teacher's newborn baby girl. (I believe he kept that)
• Mandy's lobster pants
• A few math classes together (Mandy is super smart)
• Spanish class
• Of course our Amore de Perrito! A film we made about two dogs falling in love. Lucy(my golden retriever) made the cut but Sky( Mandy's golden retriever) and Lucy did not work well together so Mandy subsituted a large stuffed moose that looks like a dog instead of her dog. It was AWESOME!
• When my Aunt died suddenly in the night Mandy encourage me with a hug and it helped. :)
• When my Grandpa passed away she mailed me a very sweet card along with Ebony May all the way from Chicago when we were both in College. Ebony May is a big goofy looking stuffed doll that is so adorable and I still have her today. That really meant a lot to me and helped me during that time because I knew she was thinking of me and praying.
• Rollerblading around Chicago with Matt x2 and Josh. Getting unlimited nachos at Chiles, going to the CHEESECAKE FACTORY!
• Taking our dogs for walks even though they needed to lie down every 5 mins.

I could think of a lot more stories and memories but to sum it up, Mandy really made doing school work FUN! She has had a major influence on my life and who I am today and is SUPER thoughtful, creative, loving, SO compassionate, a Godly woman and I am blessed to know her and have been influenced by her.