~Friday's Friend~

~Mallory Whitlock Hall~

(June 2008)

I'm so excited about telling this story, because it's such a neat friendship story!!! Mallory and I started our friendship in Junior High. She was new to town, and our class loved getting to know her! My memory has pretty much vanished due to age and having 2 kids, but here are the memories that I have of junior high days with Mal.....going to pick her up for prayer breakfast, hanging out at her house after school, spend the night parties (sometimes on week nights!), cutting thru her neighborhood to go to Traceway park to watch our guys play baseball, laughing our heads off (Inch High Private Eye haha!!), and of course all the drama that goes along with junior high! haha!

Well, in ninth grade Mallory announced that her family was moving to Alabama! :( It's never fun "losing" a best friend....especially when they're moving to another state! I think we tried to keep in touch for a while, but then we pretty much lost all contact....until....

We found eachother on FACEBOOK!!!!!! Gosh, I love facebook. Once we found eachother, we started talking and catching up. After about a year of "facebooking" eachother, I told her that Michael and I would be in the Birmingham area and that I'd love to get together while we were there. We were both so excited about seeing eachother after all those years! Well....at the last minute, our trip got cancelled. When I told Mal, we were both really bummed. She told us to still come and we could just stay with her and her husband, Austin. I immediately agreed! When I told Michael he said...."You haven't seen this girl since 9th grade and now we're about to load up our family and drive 7 hours to stay with them??" hahaha....it did sound kinda silly when he put it like that. But we went anyway! And I'm SOOO glad we did!!!

We got to their house in Cullman, AL around midnight. It was such a neat reunion and we were both just so excited to see eachother! We introduced eachother to our husbands and to Abby. We all ended up talking for about an hour and a half and then decided it was time to crash! The rest of the weekend consisted of: a festival, fishing, eating, sight seeing, taking LOTS of pics, playing Apples to Apples, going to their church, and catching up! It was such a fun weekend, and you would've NEVER thought it had been 9 years since we had seen eachother. Mal's husband is a GREAT guy and him and Michael hit it off instantly!! And of course Abby loved them, and they loved her! I was so sad when we had to leave to go back home.

Since that reunion, they have come to Brookhaven to stay with us, we met at Ross Bridge and spent the weekend together, we've met a couple times in Jackson, we talked about moving to Cullman and all living together (hahaha!!!), and we try to keep in touch the best we can. Actually, I think Michael and Austin do a better job of keeping in touch than me and Mallory. SHAME ON US!! :) However, ever since I had Parker, I've been chasing my life in a full sprint....and still can't catch up!! It's been wayyyyyyyyyy too long since we've seen our Hall besties, and now Mal is preggie and they've moved into a new house....so we've GOT to get to Cullman AsAP!!

Mallory, I am SOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo happy for you and Austin. Yall are going to be the absolute best parents in the world!!!! (Well, besides for us! haha) I hope we can plan a trip this summer, because once baby Hall gets here....it will be even harder to plan trips! I'm glad that we have "reunited" and I hope our friendship continues to grow....even with 7 hours of distance between us! I love you, girl!

your friend,

Tina Tanya Tonya