Farewell Joy and Louis

Last weekend I helped give Louis and Joy a going away party in Jackson. I have a few pictures posted below. Usually on our blog, I don't really "blog"...I just tell you what Rob and I have been doing lately. Well, that all changes for this one. I just have to write a little about "my" Joy. Today, Louis left to go back to his home, South Africa. Joy is here for another month and then she leaves too. They plan to make their new home in Pretoria, SA. For those of you faithful blog readers that don't know Joy, then you don't realize what a gem she is and what she has meant to me over the past 28 years. She is not only my cousin, but my friend and more like a sister. Born 4 months before me, our parents probably knew we would grow up to be close, but I'm not sure they ever knew what kind of bond we would share. Joy has been such an inspiration to me. Our childhood memories are so sweet, but our last two years at Ole Miss and then both moving to Jackson after college are some of the best years of my life....and a lot of that has to do with Joy. One of my favorite Ole Miss memories is us studying together for finals our senior year at Joy and Louis' apartment. ok..we really didn't study together...after all, she was a pharmacy major and I was a communicative disorders major. Joy would sit on the couch and I on a reclining chair. We would have our books in our lap and the tv was always "muted" on HGTV... probably after about 20 minutes had passed, we both realized that neither of us were reading our books, but watching a muted tv show. We just decided then and there that we weren't accomplishing anything...no studying was getting done and we couldn't even hear the tv....so, there was only one thing we could do....we unmuted the tv:) I guess we ended up doing ok on those finals. The end of our senior year at Ole Miss and our first year in Jackson was a tough time for me. I honestly don't know if I would have finished graduate school if it weren't for Joy being in Jackson with me. I think I probably went to Joy and Louis' house almost every day until I met Rob (I apologized to Louis about that last night)... Joy was such an inspiration to me. She helped me learn some very important life lessons and more importantly she helped me realize who I was and whose I was. I will forever be grateful for the past 6 years and I am so sad to see them leave. Well...darn it I'm crying now so I must end this blog abruptly. BTW...Rob and I have started saving for the first of many trips to South Africa.