REUNION WEEKEND

Saturday morning cartoons at the hotel...breakfast at Black Bear diner...a walk across the Sundial Bridge...reunion lunch at Simpson...catching up with old friends...bounce houses...showing the kids where we met and went to college...showing Jacob his first home...dinner at Chipotle (again)...Jacob and Micah running around a giant field waving glowsticks with all of our friends kids...a cozy family snuggle under the stars waiting for the fireworks to start....fireworks!?! (they couldn't have 4th of July fireworks this year because of the fires, so they did them this weekend instead)...watching the fireworks through the eyes of a 6 year old and a 2 year old...hanging out by the fire pit at Sea and Bannings house and making smores...laughing with friends...visiting our Redding church, Risen King, on Sunday morning...lunch at Discovery Village with lots of friends...definitely a weekend to remember!

celebrating the completion of Forest and Stacie's adoption paperwork...now they just have to wait to get a call to go get their sweet little baby in Ethiopia
the girls...best friends since freshmen year of college...Dana...Amy...Stacie...Me 
reunion lunch at Simpson...Stacie...Forest...Dana...Me...Tim
Amy (my roomate for 6 years)...Jill and her sweet little Abby
hanging out waiting for the fireworks show to start (so glad my mom came with us)
SeaJay...Dana...Me
Our little family...notice all the glow sticks (thanks so much Aims)
Family Pic with Sara, Ari, and Braden (we are so glad you found us in the dark Sara)
smores by the fire pit in SeaJay and Banning's amazing backyard 

10 YEARS

We are in Redding this weekend for our 10 year Simpson College (now University) reunion.   Last night we met our best friends at Chipotle (Yummy Yummy)!  It was so fun to see everyone and to watch all of our kids running around and playing together.  I love my friends and am so thankful that after 10 years we still have really close friendships.  After dinner we took my mom and the boys back to the hotel.  We are staying at the Red Lion, which holds special memories for me.  When I arrived at Simpson, my Junior Year, our dorm was not completed.  A ton of us were put up in the Red Lion hotel for over a month which was so much fun...maid service, room service, best friends to hang out with...what more could a college girl ask for!  Anyway, we got my mom and the boys settled in and headed over to Sea Jay's house to hang out with everyone.  First we had to make a quick stop at Discovery Village (our favorite hang out spot when we lived here).  Tim got a coffee and as we were leaving we ran into a bunch of other Simpson Alumni.  It was fun to catch up.  We made our way to Sea's house and while to girls chatted and caught up, our husbands did what all grown men love to do...played video games on the Wii.  It was getting late so we decided we should go back and go to bed, but we wanted to take a drive through Simpson on our way and reminisce about the good ol' days.  We saw that something was going on in the gym and thought we'd check it out.  We ended up staying until midnight and watching the current students put on an "Air Bands"  show.  We could not help feeling like it was just yesterday that we were the ones doing all of this crazy stuff.  The school has changed so much though!  Curfew is only effective for freshmen!!!  It  seem like the "no spaghetti strap" rule is no longer in place and some of the air band music was a litte questionable.  Interresting.  When Tim and I drove away we both agreed that our college experience was one of the most formidable and exciting times of our lives.  Ten years have flown by and it seems like just yesterday that this cute bleach blond transfer student walked up to me in the parking lot and said, "I've seen you all over the place, but I haven't met you yet."   Who would have known that 10 years and 2 kids later we would be back at the place we met, feeling like no time has passed.  I wonder what the next 10 years will hold.