Trip #4: Branson

March 7, 2009 - Mr. and Mrs. Richard Cole

From the moment I was born the Cooper family was my second family. Conner is six months older and Kristen is a year younger and they have been my very best friends from the beginning. I’m pretty sure I had they’re phone number memorized before I even knew my own. We would walk through the woods and meet each other half-way to go play at each others houses everyday. Literally every memory I have before college is with Conner and Kristen.Memories with Kristen:
- Pleading with the neighborhood boys to let us play in their fort
- Pretending to be Harriet the Spy and sneaking into the Morgan’s house one day to record all of our “clues”
- Both of us admitting our first crush- the boy from the Buttercream Gang in the jean shorts!
- Hundreds of gymnastics meets,
- Mother/daughter shopping sprees in Springfield
- Being drug all over the place to watch our brother's basketball and soccer games
- Tae Bo workouts with Sasha and Kara
- Listening to Odyessy tapes together
- Branson High School – oh man where to start….school dances, carpooling every day, track meets, football games, our matching toe rings, planning stunt together, crying a lot about Branson High, student council, being the 'bench girls' in Oklahoma the musical when Conner got a solo… and the list goes on forever.
I could not be more blessed by the friendship I have with my dear Kristen. She is my constant best friend and will be forever. She is my Diana Berry. Sadly, we don’t live in the same city and don’t get to see each other very often, but when we do it’s truly as if no time has past. She just gets me, like no one else does. This morning I was praying that 1) we will someday live closer to one another and 2) that my daughter with have a best friend in life as she is to me. I am so blessed to have a best friend who is real, who is honest, who is a woman after God’s heart, who accepts me for who I am, who will laugh with me and cry with me, who will always be there. I don’t know what I would do without her!!
It was so special to be there as she married the most wonderful man, Richard Cole. They are just the greatest couple and I am so so so excited for them to be a newlywed couple!! Maybe someday we'll get to live in the same city!

all the bridesmaids in the chapel: