sorry, mel!

o.k. i've left out a friend - and she called me on it!

melanie (new) nixon and sweet grant (her son) ran into me/mary peyton/shana/grayson while we were at coldstone yesterday.

for those of you who REALLY know me, you know that mel was close to being my sister-in-law. i dated/was engaged to her brother, kris.

and we still have a great relationship.

o.k. i guess i'll go into the whole thing. i've wondered if i would ever do a post about this and i guess here it is........

the summer before my senior year, i met and started dating kris. we dated and got engaged and after almost 5 years, broke up. this was my senior year of hygiene school.

kris and i didn't speak much at all until the next year when he moved to jackson. by this time, tommy and i were engaged (whew - that's a whole story in itself......maybe i'll post that one next!). kris and i had kept in touch - mainly by e-mail every so often.

anyway - kris was working the night shift at his job. kinda hard to meet people when you are working while they are sleeping/going out! tommy and i had been over on lakeland drive and were coming back down ridgewood when TOMMY said for me to call kris and see if he wanted to go eat with us. WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! i asked if he was serious and he said that if he lived somewhere and only knew a few people, he would want someone to do the same for him.

talk about security!

kris went with us (to o'charley's) and the rest is history. he and tommy have played softball together, watched numerous ballgames together, gone to atlanta together for the ncaa regional semi-finals/finals in basketball, etc., etc. they have become friends in their own right.

and, yes, people tell me that we are wierd. is it more wierd that kris' wife, deanne, and i are friends, too?

i say that we are blessed.

kris' family - MELANIE included - were my family, too, for a long time. when tommy and i met, i told him that i planned to keep in touch with kris. tommy said that he did not have a problem with this. his words were: "how can i tell you that you cannot care about someone who was your life for 5 years?" i'm telling you - he is so secure!

there's a lot more to it, but that's it in a nutshell. yes, melanie, you are one of my precious friends. i love your family so much - and thank God that you've been part of my life!