Happy Birthday, Jenifer!

My dearest friend Jenifer celebrates her birthday today. I miss her tremendously. We met in Virginia. She was my first Visiting Teacher, and we became fast friends. Our personalities were quite different, but we understood each other so well, and appreciated each other's strengths. It helped that her youngest daughter became great friends with Gillian. In fact, when we first told our children that we were moving to California, the first thing Gillian said was "I don't want to go; Isabelle won't be there." Ironically, my first words to Elijah were "I'll miss my friends when we move to California." I sure do!
I love you Jenifer and I hope you have a great birthday!

I'm so grateful for my friend, Jenifer. During our countless hours of conversations, we would discuss almost every subject we were interested in ranging from our families, our life goals, books we were reading, religion, parenting, callings, to scientific discoveries, politics, and friends. I appreciated Jenifer's logical reasoning, her extensive research before she made any decisions, her humility, her brilliant mind, her example as a mother, her faith, her bravery against life's hardships, and determination. We've grown so close together these past years. We've been there for each other in times of joy or sadness. We've seen each other grow and become stronger and more mature, but at the same time we've seen each other make mistakes and become weak when times were hard. Through all of that, we learned we were kindred spirits. We would especially have a lot of fun when Katherine would join us. During those time, kids and husbands didn't exist, and they didn't bother us. We would talk, eat, and laugh like little girls. Then again, are we that different? I hope not. In our hearts we are little girls. I can't wait till we get together again!