My Internet Friend

I have a really good friend, Ashby, whom I met online. Really. Since it sounds a little weird (both our husbands like to tease us about it) I'll explain the whole story. When I was newly pregnant with Noah basically everything revolved around my pregnancy. I would research anything and everything regarding pregnancy symptoms, fetal development, baby products, etc, etc. I was obsessed. I found a website that talked about each week of pregnancy in detail and, of course, started checking it daily. The website has reader forums set up for each month so I started reading on the July birth club. Well, one day Ashby posted kind of an introductory post on that forum. She was due the same day I was, we're the same age, and she lived in Provo, UT. Since I went to BYU in Provo, I posted back that I had gone to college there. She emailed me saying that she had gone to BYU too and we just started emailing back and forth. It turned out that we were at in the dorms at the same time, and even had a mutual friend. We had so much in common and just became really good friends. Plus, it was really fun to have someone due the same day as me because we could talk pregnancy and kind of go through it all together. If I were to print out our emails I would have an awesome pregnancy journal because we talked about absolutely everything relating to our pregnancies and babies. Anyway, a few months later Ben and I both attended a recruiting event for work out at BYU. While I was there Ashby and I met in person (Ben came with, just in case she was a weirdo in person, but she wasn't!).

The next year, Ben and Noah and I went out to Provo again for a friend's wedding so Ashby and I met up at the park with our babies.

Anyway, so we've met a couple of times and emailed a ton and talked on the phone and we've just become really good friends over the last few years.

I tell you the whole story because this past week Ashby and her girls (she had her second baby a few months after Sam was born) came out to visit me! Ben was at Scout camp all week (he was asked to be the Scoutmaster in our ward) so I had some company. It was so much fun having her and the girls here. We just hung out and went to the pool and had some girl time. I'll post pictures and stuff in another post (this one is getting a little long). Oh, one funny story though. Ashby and I were looking through my BYU scrapbook one night and every once in a while she'd see someone that she knew too. So we're laughing about what a small world it is and then she flips the page and points to a picture of me with a couple of girls at a bonfire and says, "That's ME!!!" So evidently we met over 10 years ago when we were freshmen at BYU and she's in my scrapbook! How funny is that? Here's the picture - I'm hugging her roommate, Becca, and Ashby is behind us:

P.S. While she was here, Ashby also updated my blog header. And she gave me a crash course in digital scrapbooking (apparantly I already have a program on my computer that can do it - yippe!). Thanks Ash! For all you digital scrapbookers, she used the "summer fun" kit from heatheranndesigns.com.