Sometimes there are people that come into your life that you feel that you have known before. Or sometimes you meet someone and you feel that your paths were meant to cross.
That's how I feel about my Leavitts. When I was an EFY counsellor I had a really special kid in my group. He was the youngest and had a beautiful smile and was so sweet and kind. A year later I moved into a house of 6girls that I didn't know, and I noticed a framed photo on the nightstand of one of the girls. It was that sweet boy Chase from EFY. The girl, Kara, told me it was her little brother. We soon found out we had more that just Chase in common. We had a lot of similar ideas about life, and we loved a lot of the same things (making out with boys, rainbow bit icing, homemade oreos, honey dijon dressing, gingersnaps, homemade pretzels, you know, all the really important things) but more important than any of that, we had a ridiculous amount of fun together. So many fun adventures in that brown Honda of hers with Boston and Cotton. Late night chicken on the way, lousy nail polish jobs, institute classes special guest singers in the middle of the night with sweet spaghetti sauce, midnight crepes with Bissacotoni and Officer Podezwa, loads of mac eyeshadow, three-barrelled hair, fishing trips with Grandpa Pack, popcorn and pop at the theatre, singing crazy theatre songs, watching Come Unto Me on Sunday afternoons, I have endless inside jokes and stories floating in my head right now that I could fill a book with. I loved my Alberta BFF. And her family became my family while I was living in the west. Her siblings and parents also happened to be some of my favourite people and their home felt like my home. That's why it was so hard to leave. I was excited to go home and marry Darryl, Kara and I had sent him a couple of tapes of us recording our ridiculous antics, songs, etc. and she knew how crazy I was about him. But it was hard to leave. We had done everything together for two and a half years, and I was going to miss her terribly. I remember sitting beside each other in Relief Society on our last Sunday together and us both crying our eyes out as we sang the closing hymn, God be with you till we meet again.
So when I got married, I knew right away I had to have her as a bridesmaid in my wedding. She came and was a HUGE help. I worked at the Sobeys deli and had ordered 99% of the food for our wedding from there. They forgot to make my order so Kara, Darryl and I spent hours in the store after it had closed rolling black forest ham and slicing pickles, cheese and buns the day before the wedding. She did my hair, she made her own bridesmaid dress. She was the best. She was also the only guest at my wedding who had a digital camera. Crazy.
Then, as luck would have it, that cute little brother of hers, Chase, was called to serve a mission in my neck of the woods and ended up spending a few months in my parents ward. He was at my little brother's baptism with us, he encouraged my other brother to go on a mission. It was so nice having him be a part of our lives for that short bit of time.
My heart broke for her when her beloved grandmother, who was such a huge part of her life, passed away quite suddenly, shortly after her grandfather had passed from cancer. I wanted so badly to go to be there for her, but I was too pregnant to fly.
Kara came and surprised me for my 26th birthday, showing up at my door. I needed that visit from her so desperately, feeling completely overwhelmed with a 16 month old and a fussy 2 month old. She made me feel so much better.
I was thrilled and honoured to be with her last December when she married her handsome husband in the Cardston temple. Being there with her entire family was an awesome experience. Helping her prepare for her wedding was so much fun. She has an amazing mother, amazing sisters and wonderful aunts who I love to visit with, and helping prepare food and decorate for the wedding alongside them was one of my favourite parts of the trip.
Not long after that, Chase got engaged and my sweet husband suggested we cash in the air miles (we had been saving them for our 10 year anniversary trip) and I take the girls and go to the wedding. It was so beautiful and so heartwarming to see my girls play with her nieces, and taking my daughters to one of may favourite places in the whole world was fantastic feeling. We hiked Bear's Hump in Waterton, swam in Emerald Lake and ate good food. We had fires and hot tubbed at the Pack ranch, saw Annie and Les Mis at the Cardston Theatre, but my favourite part of this Alberta visit was laughing so hard every night. We stayed at her sister's house, and had a lot of fun. Kara has 2 sisters who are just as hilarious as she is, and I find their husbands just as funny. Laughing till my cheeks and my belly hurt is a rare thing for me, pretty much my sister Char and the Leavitts are the only ones who do it to me. It was an unforgettable trip.
And right now my heart is aching because Kara gave birth to her first baby, a boy named Theo (named after her grandma Theodora) last month, and I would give anything to give that sweet boy a snuggle and do a load of laundry for her, and these phone chats and texts and pictures aren't cutting it for me.
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