A Family Reunion ~ of sorts...

So when I reflect back to my teenage years I have so many sweet thoughts...I know that isn't necessarily common but for me it is true. I can attribute it all to the wonderful friends I was blessed with at the time. I suppose I should give some credit to my parents because when they decided to make their last move they recognized that their children were about to enter some of the hardest years of their life. I was smack dab in the middle of 7th grade (the worst year of anyone's life I believe) and Jason was in 6th...Greg was only in kindergarten so he had many "good" school years ahead of him. My parents got the ball rolling by checking out the various wards of their church and picked one that had a strong group of youth. Of course they were very disappointed when the ward was promptly split and we were sent off to the "new" one, but that was where the blessings began. The kids that landed in that ward were incredible people and my teenage years were rich and full of fun because of them. I won't begin to go into all of the adventures that we had together, but it is a time in my life that I will always cherish. Shortly after this splitting of the ward my soon to be bestest friend, Joy, moved in to that ward's boundaries. My life would not have been the same without her, and yet once we reached adulthood our lives diverged and we drifted away from each other. A few years ago she made the effort to track me down and to reconnect...Thank you Joy for doing so. This past week, after more years than I can even remember (somewhere between16-18) we finally got to be together in person. We connected again at Music and the Spoken Word so that we could also visit with another of our childhood friends, Ryan (he grew up to be the Associate Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir). I've always wanted to attend this show so I was excited for that alone, but to catch up with my long lost friend Joy was so exciting. What we didn't know was that another of our childhood friends, Nate, and his father(who was the member of the bisopric over the youth program as we were growing up) had happened to pick the exact same performance to attend. It was a wonderful surprise. These people were part of my extended family growing up and it was a wonderful surprise family reunion.
Left to right you have me, Joy, Bro. Lytle, Ryan, Nate, and his youngest brother Seth. Sunday was a wonderful day and I'm so glad I got to see everyone. Thank you Joy for taking the time to come and hang out with me on your family vacation. I was so glad to catch up and let's not let it be another 15+ years! I love you :-)

4th of July hiking - Silver Lake

Notice that I'm in none of the pictures...nobody needs to see my overheated out of shape form hoofing it up the side of a mountain ;) You can see how high we climbed in a later picture because the lake in that picture is the same lake as this one here...