Eternal Friends: Shout out to The Reddings and Herberts

Our whole married life, Ray & I have been blessed with some amazing friends! Unfortunately a lot of of our friends are in various parts of the United States. Whenever we get to see them or talk with them, it is like nothing changes, we just pick right up where we were. I'm not going to name them, they know who they are and I wouldn't want to accidentally forget someone, either.

For our trip we got to see two of these families that are life long friends!
We got to spend the night with The Kim and Angela Redding Family and The Shaun and Cathy Herbert Family. I love both of these families so much and it is so fun to visit and catch up on life together and to laugh and cry together. I love that we can just open up and visit! I wish I had pictures of these families from our trip, so I will have to share some from the past!

First of all the Redding Family! They moved in down the street from us the year before Melissa went to school. That year was so much fun! We knew everyone on our street and the kids would go back and forth between the houses. We started our own little preschool group with the 4 girls as pictured below -Brooklyn Lauren, Melissa, and Maleah going to the pumpkin patch

 On our vacations we would even meet up! We visited them in Wyoming coming back from our PA vacation.

 We had each others kids over. Kelli and Melissa making us a "fancy" dinner.

 All of our many girls nights out and sleepless nights! Laughing and crying together.

 Lauren, Melissa, and Maleah getting dressed up together for some girls night out.

 Mackenzie's baptism

Another Girl's retreat. I love this picture! We had a lot of us there! 

Tiffany Rackham, Carol Maughan, Angela redding, Jennie Klumker, Kylie Kincaid, Donna Shoop, and Darri Guinto. We all have started out in Lacey 2 ward, sadly I am the only one left. :(

 At one of our trips to Boise to visit the Reddings, they took us to a friend's house to ride horses.

 Lauren and Mackenzie visiting us, with Aurora

 One of our stops in Boise visiting, me & Ang

Another girl's retreat, Darri, Sue, Jen, Donna, Ang, and Pam

I know the girls don't like this one, but it makes me smile every time I see it! Lauren, Melissa, and Maleah.

 
And then the mom's trying to recreate it with out remembering how the picture looked. HAHAHA

 I love the next 2 pictures of Darri, Angela, and me! Darri and I flew out to see Ang. I can't even remember if there was a reason? (Does there need to be?!)

And The Herbert Family! We knew them before they were a family. Ray grew up knowing Cathy, they were in the same stake. Shortly after his mission he met Shaun from some of his good friends, The Jaster family. Shaun went to Ricks. Ray & I & Shaun were all in the same ward. I have a picture in my hallway of Shaun from college days, but it isn't scanned. Shaun and Cathy are both from Pennsylvania where Ray is from. They both came to our wedding at the WA DC Temple. Shaun was one of our witnesses. The next year we went to their wedding at the WA DC temple! Sadly we haven't seen them much over the years. We moved to Washington soon after they were married. Whenever we went back to visit PA we would visit them. 

Here is all the "men" that were at our wedding, Shaun is 2nd from the right in the back. 

Dan Carter, Dan, Ray, John, Shaun, Dwight (in the shorts) Ray's dad and grandpa in the front.

 Here are all the women at our wedding, Cathy is 2nd from the left.
Theresa and Laura in the back, Donna stalter, Cathy, Jackie- Ray's mom, me, Aunt Darlene, Gma Stambaugh, and Gmas sister Pearl

In 2005, The Herberts had already moved to Utah. We just happened to both be visiting PA at the same time. They were nice enough to come visit us at Aunt Darlene's house. Here are all of our kids together.

 Our family

 The oldest four

The Herbert family

This is from a April 2013 when we visited Utah and stayed with them.

 April 2013, their family (it was conference morning, so they are all still in the their pjs and I insisted on getting a picture)

Now their oldest son, Seth is on a mission serving in Renton WA! We're so excited for when he is done, the Herberts are planning on coming to visit us to pick him up!

A big thank-you to both of these families for letting us crash at your homes! We love you both and are so grateful for your friendships that have lasted through the years and I know will continue to last forever! We are so lucky to have such good friends!