Happy Birthday Jen

My best friend's name is Jen. And today is her birthday.

I met Jen is second grade. She had two ponytails that were curled into ringlets and she was wearing a yellow shirt. I thought she looked like a porcelain doll, and I wanted to be her friend. I have met very few people who are still friends with someone they met in second grade.

Jen and I were friends on and off through most of grade school and junior high. Even though when we were young I was horribly bossy and sometimes quite mean (I know Jen, I'm sorry).

By high school, we were basically inseparable even though our boyfriends had a tendency to sway our attentions. During our senior year we had every single class together and miraculously, we never got sick of each other. Not once. We drove beat-up cars (named: Merv and Bullet) that we would strategically place in the parking lot in order to make a fast escape for lunch. We ate at Jen's house almost everyday. We pretended to know what we were talking about in Mrs. Berg's class, we didn't try to pretend in Mr. Pringles'. We rolled our eyes and Mr. Weisbeck, never listened to Senor Silva, and treated Mr. Nyblade as if he were a god, who could punish us.

We graduated from high school and decided to live in the same house in college. We spent a blissful school year full of 3 AM drives to Jack in the Box, jigging to Green Day, and putting black lights in our rooms. After our first year of school we both ventured to the mountains of Idaho to work at Redfish Lake. It was there that Jen would meet her future husband (like, on the first day I might add), that handsome dude in the picture above.

Now, we're all grown up. And we live approximately 15 hours away from each other. I miss Jen. I think about her a lot. I still consider her my BFF and whenever I get the chance to talk to her on the phone, it's like she's living right next door.

Dear Jen,

I wish I was at your house right now. I would bake a cake that would turn out fine, but that I would then ruin for old time's sake. But instead, I will write you this post.

I wish that we lived closer to each other so that our daughters could play together and we could watch daytime talk shows together. But instead, I'll try to call you more often.

I wish you were here to look through all of these photos I have of us. There are stacks and stacks of them and I am laughing out loud. I tried to find pictures that you wouldn't get mad at me for posting (except for that one of you on the Redfish boat which is awesome and worth your anger), but after a while I just decided to narrow my search to anything that didn't have Stuart flipping the camera off in it. You wouldn't believe how many pictures there are like that...wait, yes...you probably would.

I love you Jenny. Have a wonderful birthday.