Happy Birthday Bonnie!

Two of my nearest & dearest friends - Mimi & Bonnie.

Bonnie is one of my best friends. I have known her since the fall of 1990 when we moved to Renton, Washington. She was my visiting teacher. We were fresh out of BYU & far away from home & family. She had two children & I had none. (She now has seven & I have three.) She was the Young Women's president & I served as the Laurel advisor. She has been an awesome friend & sister for as long as I can remember. I would love to write a beautiful essay about how much she means to me, but I don't want to proofread & rearrange & all of that. So instead, I will tell you 20 random facts (or until I run out of ideas).

• She & her husband met in seminary when she was 14. They married after his mission.
• She is wise & is able to cut through extraneous information & quickly come to a decision.
• She is the mother of seven children - a son on a mission for seven more days & a daughter just starting college & 5 more involved in football, baseball, ballroom dance, soccer, & swimming (all at the same time).
• She juggles a schedule that would make me weep. Whenever I think that I have to do a lot of carpooling, I talk to her & realize that I have it easy - really, really easy.
• She has a strong testimony of the gospel.
• She is a great travel agent. When I drove from SC to FL to WA, she talked me through the crazy journey. She was the other adult in the car with me keeping me sane. When I would be lost, she would get on the internet & find out where I was & how to get to where I wanted to be. (Hopes of having an 11-year-old be the chief map reader were ill-founded.) She would suggest my stopping point for the night & then help me find a good hotel.
• She is a patient psychiatrist. When I moved to SC, I was very very very homesick & pregnant. I talked to her EVERY day for years.
• She has an uncanny ability of hopping in the shower or shopping at Fred Meyer's when I call her. ;)
• When we drove home from the hospital with our new baby Christopher, we came home & she came over to see us. She immediately sensed that we had no clue what we were doing & needed some basics - she helped set up a modified changing table on the kitchen table (a towel folded in two) and a makeshift bassinet (a Rubbermaid box beside the bed).
• She gives countless hours of selfless service to people in her ward. She is not one to boast & rarely lets her left hand (me) know what her right hand is doing.
• She serves as the bishop's wife.
  
• She is soft-spoken & kind.
• She is super practical. (the carpet)
  
• When I was turning 40 & so stressed out, she & Scott worked together by phone to have her come & surprise me on my doorstep. She even called me during the day when she was on a layover so that I wouldn't get suspicious.
• When we lost our baby at 18 weeks, she comforted me & helped me work through a depression that was deep & long-lasting.
• She scrapbooks & is almost up-to-date on all 7 kids' scrapbooks & a family book (with fancier pages). She has made several wonderful scrapbooks for me as gifts. When we left Washington, she contacted people in the ward we lived in to make a going-away book for us. It included a picture, addresses & phone numbers, & memories of people & when they met us or what we meant to them. So precious.
  
• She has everyone's phone numbers memorized just like I do.
• She is an avid genealogist & has submitted a lot of names for temple work. She has worked on & off for as long as I can remember at gathering names on her husband's family.
• She does not gossip. Since we haven't lived in the same ward for 16 years, we don't know tons of people in common; but even if we did, she is not a teller of tales. She is the VAULT & if you tell her something, it stays there.
• She loves to travel as much as I do... and has been to many more exotic places than I.

I have lost track of how many points that is and I know I've forgotten some key ones - but HAPPY BIRTHDAY my friend.