Happy Birthday Lisa!

So I was looking through some old journals this past week and my BFF Lisa has contributed to so much fun, happiness, laughter, depth, adventure, and so much more in my life. I found a poem she wrote and gave to me the day I was leaving to live in Russia for the first time. I seriously think there are tear stains on this from reading it on the plane. I was so scared and this made me feel so much peace...

The Traveler

Small billows of dust

Make clouds around her ankles

As she moves silently along the dirt road.

She neither thinks of where she is going

Or where she has been.

There will be time for that

At the end of the trail.

She travels simply-

A small satchel carries provisions

And the other necessities of her journey

Yet she is content.

Her experiences become her greatest treasures-

Too vast to be contained in a bag

And too precious to leave behind

She keeps them carefully preserved

Beyond the locked shadows

Of her eyes.

Like others before,

She walks this path.

Yet each step becomes

A fresh dab of paint

On a canvas

That is uniquely her own.

That's just a glimpse of how thoughtful and creative Lisa is.

We have worked at 4 of the same places over the years--and thus we have numerous inside jokes that can send us into a fit of side splitting laughter if we even say a word. "Ethiopia" Lisa, go ahead...laugh, you know it's funny. (This one involved Auntie, the owner of L&L drive-in, where we worked in Hawaii. Let's just say she was *trying* very hard to learn english. We came into work one day and she was struggling painfully with this one word--"Ethiopia". We tried to tell her the chances of her using that word in her day to day life as the owner of a fast food restaurant in Laie, Hawaii was pretty small, but she was determined to be able to say this word). But, ANYWAYS, my point here is that Lisa and I kind of get each other's humor and we find humor in most of the same things along this road of life.

I can't wait til she lives in Utah again. She is now in Boston doing yet more schooling with her hubby.

So Happy Birthday Lisa and thanks to Bob and Ellen for bringing you into the world! Luv ya!!