~MAY SHE REST IN PEACE~

In response to a wonderful picture posted of me on someone's blog that shall remain nameless, I give you this wonderful picture of a dear old friend. We met when I was only 16! We became great friends. We had a lot of good times together - staying up late, eating tons of junk food, (wish I could still do that with no worries), going to the store to buy yet another card for our boyfriends (didn't we call them Duey & Luey?), playing violin in the string & wind ensemble and adding crazy extras to the music when we became bored. And yes, I remember the crazy photos that were taken in the girls dorm. Some of which had better never surface. 8-) We also went grocery shopping on a regular basis during the time we took a vocabulary class from Mr. Bruce Campbell. We had the best time ever buying the most unusual fruits/vegetables we could find in the store. Wasn't that class fun? I remember we would be so loud in the dorm sometimes that the Dean of Women (or whoever was in the office down below) would call upstairs and tell us to "quiet down up there"! That took an interesting turn when Carrie became the RA on our floor! (Yeah, I know I just told you the name of the person in the picture...I just couldn't keep you in suspense any longer:) Now, she had to get after me for my 'Wicked Witch of the West' cackle.

Oh, for the good old days of college life where the biggest crisis (for me) was waking up for the 7:00 AM classes! I thought that was way to early! Now, 14 years post-college, I have been married 12 years, have given birth to four children, and have been up WAY before 7:00 AM more times than I can begin to count! And, it seems like there is a crisis more times than there are hours in the day. Today, for instance, I have been up less than 3 hours. My two youngest children, Samuel - 3 and Callie - 2 have decided to demolish the remainder of yesterdays birthday cake, spill milk on my laptop, (thank goodness it was closed and the cup was nearly empty!), Dump out piles and piles of legos, racetracks, etc. right in the middle of the once clean livingroom floor, pinch their fingers once again in the closet door, (you think Samuel would remember how badly that hurts and stop doing it) and finally, discover one of Callie's Christmas presents (she's crying her eyes out because I took it away from her). My kids sure do keep my life interesting. I'm afraid to look any more around the house for fear of what other mess I'll discover!

(OK! I started writing this post on Friday. I'm just now getting around to finishing it. As you can tell from the other posts, we had birthday party overload this week at our house! Does anyone want some cake?) Now....back to the girl in the picture. I can't remember exactly why on earth this picture was taken. (My body has been seriously sleep deprived since we got internet connection! I've been spending way too many of my post-putting-the-kids-to-bed hours gleaning new tidbits of information.) Maybe she can enlighten us! :> Anyway, I hope that she doesn't retaliate with an even worse picture of me! I'm sure she has a few more! I did consider having the exact pose that she posted on her blog taken of me currently. I thought the aging process might be interesting to some of you! LOL :) Carrie - thanks for all the good times we had in college. You were a great friend and I'm glad to finally reconnect via the internet after ALL these years! May you always rest in peace!