Fifteen years ago, my life was changed forever when I met these people:
Robbie, Ben ("Bean"), Amy ("Simmons"), Jacob ("Beastie"), Jolie, and Jessica ("Faber").
It is no use to try to explain why our high school friends are the best friends ever, or why our friendship with this group surpasses all definitions of friendship. No one ever quite "gets" it or even believes us! Let's just say that none of us are surprised that we are still close and tight-knit, 12 years after graduation. It was not difficult to convince everyone to fly in from all over the country (Boston, Philadelphia, Florida, California) to get together. WHY? Because we have SO MUCH FUN together. We get each other's jokes and laugh harder than ever when we're together. After several years, we don't have to try to get reacquainted because we all helped each other become the people we are. I love these people!
It also helps a lot that Ben and I got married. We owe our relationship to the foundation of friendship that we built in this group. It is SO fun to have 15 years of memories together and to have the same best friends. Ben and I have lots of inside jokes that go way back to our crazy days with our high school friends.
If you didn't notice, we are all in the prime of our lives! Just look at us! We were really proud of ourselves for going hiking up Adams Canyon for our 30-year combined birthday celebration. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, since we are the same people who frolicked about at Disneyland and Six Flags chanting "Healthy Kids Unite! Healthy Kids Unite!" for no apparent reason. We did a lot of crazy things that we should probably be embarrassed about now. But we aren't.

A lovely post-hike brunch at Jacob's parents' home. We thought about having our reunion at some cool destination, but why would we want to do that, when we can hang out at our parents' houses for free? I believe it was at this table that we realized 6 out of 7 of us are still on our parents' cell phone plan. Or maybe it was 7 out of 7? How's that for independence?

A LOT of laughing happened during this interlude.
Seriously, a lot.
Think several episodes of everyone busting up until they cried. We were looking at pictures, reading journal entries, and holding our "Relic of the Past" gift exchange.
Here is one of the funniest pictures: Robbie trying to stay warm on the Europe trip.
This is the relic I scored in the gift exchange. We wore these shirts on our California choir trip, and then in the 4th of July parade. Can you believe we made a float that said "Tracy's Kids: a Cancer Foundation" and on the other side "Tracy's Kids: the Famous Septuplets," neither of which are remotely true? Tracy (Jolie's mom, who made the t-shirts and rode her unicycle proudly in the parade) had several people congratulate her on doing something so generous as creating a foundation for children with cancer.
We met up with Tyler/Alison, Justin/Diane, and Jenni/Troye (plus David Choules) for a delicious dinner.
The next day, the kids were invited, and we swam at Robbie's pool.
My kids had a blast playing with Jenni's kids. I'm really wishing Jenni had made it to the hike/brunch the day before, because she should have been in all of those pictures!
We jumped at the trampoline park (joined by Tiffany and kids!)
and met Jolie's dogs. Jolie entertained the kids by showing lots of dog tricks. My kids were terrified in the moment, but now they talk about Comet and Savvy all the time as if it was the highlight of their trip to Utah.
We had a great picnic at the park and lingered as long as we could. We schemed about our next get together, which needs to be sooner rather than later. We had way too much fun together to go very long before doing this again!