Friends

Back in high school I ran around with a group of girls that I now refer to as the gang which included Andrea, Elisabeth, Teresa, and Valerie. We all went to OSU except for Elisabeth and remained close friends through college. Since college our lives have taken us in separate ways and down different roads. But despite our differences we have remained friends.

When I was younger, I never realized how precious friendships would be throughout life. I have concluded that friendships are similar to a marriage. There are going to be life changing moments, incredible memories, disagreements, hard times, but in the end you love them and can't live without them. Your friendships can grow apart but they also grow together. And if you work at them, make them a priority, and communicate with each other you can usually work through anything.

So you are probably asking yourself what evoked these random thoughts on friendship? Just recently one of my best friends, Elisabeth, had her wedding shower. The whole high school gang was there to celebrate with her and we took a group pictures. After I got home, I looked at the picture and got to thinking about how many time we had taken a "group picture." So I dug out my scrapbooks and here's what I found. I believe this picture was taken during our senior year of high school in 1998. In the front (from left to right) are Andrea and Elisabeth and in the back (from left to right) are Teresa, Valerie, and me.This next picture was taken at Valerie's bachelorette party which was just after we graduated college in the summer of 2002. From left to right are Teresa, Elisabeth, Valerie, Andrea, and me.And finally, this is the picture we took at Elisabeth's wedding shower last month. As you can probably see, not much has changed. From left to right are Teresa, Valerie, Elisabeth, me, and Andrea.I truly cherish each of these friendships and look forward to making many more memories with them. Please don't kill me girls for the old school pics!