Ellen...bogan

My best friend, Ellen, came to visit this weekend from DC. Her hubby, David, is clerking in DC - and thats all I am going to say about that just to be on the safe side.
I met Ellen when we were about 6 or 7. I was very into my stuffed animals, and my pet rabbit (Cottontail) at the time and by the time she left my house she had convinced me that she did not have anything soft to cuddle up with at night. I, thinking this was a terrible way for another human being to exist, gave her a doll that my grandmother had made me. What she really wanted was this tiny white rabbit (a toy that I had gotten at the beach that summer) and she tried her hardest to get me to give it to her. I was a pretty selfish little kid, so instead of the white rabbit I agreed to let her take the doll, which, I might add, was most definately not my favorite. When my mother found out she was pretty upset since this was an heirloom toy and after a while I got the doll back. I am writing this because this is my first memory of Ellen. We have had a very long history together. We were in choire together, we did homeschooling stuff together with our brothers. We both rode horses. She HAD horses at her lovely farm in NC and I just rode schooling ponies at a barn accross town. Schooling ponies or not I still loved my barn and wore my Fox Run Farm sweat-shirt around her whenever I got the chance. I guess you could say we were always a little competetive with eachother. We even went to the same college. I got engaged first (it didn't take) she got married first and I followed in December of the same year. She was always smarter than I was, I always spent more time primping. We have been friends for alot of years. We have been through alot of really tough times, really tough.
There are few things that have remained constant in our relationship and I will list them here: An obecession with Anne of Green Gables (more specifically Gilbert Blythe), a love for our faith and the way we were raised to worship, and our love for eachother.
This weekend she came to see me and I can not even express what it meant to me. Ellen has been blessed with a tiny baby boy named Seth. He is still baking in her belly but I was so happy to able to see my friend before her next adventure arrives. Isn't she the cutest lady with a bump you have ever seen? I love the first picture there because we look the same way we looked when we were 11 and singing Amy Grant at the top of our lungs while mucking her barn. We were both dorky and neither of us was cool in the least but we really enjoyed being so uncool together. We never made eachother feel bad because they wanted to do something dorky like, dress up and go walking through the woods acting out Anne Shirley's adventures, because we were both up for it!
Ellen's friendship has been the longest of my life. More than that it has been the most important, the most meaningful. She is such an example to me. She has her faults, don't get me wrong here, but she knows what they are. More importantly she knows what mine are and she loves me just the same. Now before this all gets just too cheesy to bare, I will tell one silly story. When I was in grade school, Mom had a neighbor teach us German. I used to do my math lessons in German. To this day its the only thing I remember. Well, numbers and one word - elenbogan. It means elbow and I am sure I am spelling it wrong but thats the way it sounds. When John and I learned this word we imediately thought of Ellen. Little kids are too clever aren't they. If you had asked me 20 years ago who my best friend would be today I would never have guessed the skinny blonde in the baby blue glasses, but I am so glad you are. Anyway - here's to you, Ellen-bogan... to you and Seth. You are going to be one heck of a Mama. Love you!