20 years!

Yes, I graduated from high school 20 years ago. Am I really that old? Yes, I really am. And this weekend, my peer and I celebrated the landmark. I actually missed the biggest attended event, Saturday night, because I couldn't justify the money for a restaurant where I couldn't eat anything. But I went today to the park and was able to see some old friends and get a tour of the old stomping grounds, or uh, splashing grounds.

  Seriously, we toured just about the whole building, except the most important room--the newspaper room.
But since Chad and I were the only old newsies there, I guess we can forgive. I'm sure much, much has changed about how the put out the Insight anyway. We used lightboards where we literally cut and pasted our articles that we printed from the computer lab, which was in another hallway. The newspaper room itself had one solitary computer in the tiny office where some people were able to begin messing around with publishing software, but if any, only our last edition was published with it.

I wish I could have had pictures with more old friends, but if I had only one, I'm glad it was Chad. He was a great editor-in-chief to work with, and more importantly, a great friend.

Princess Birthday Party

For my birthday this week, I had the best theme ever, even since my own childhood. Early in the week, my mom called local family to see if they would like to come over and help me celebrate on Friday. (My actual birthday was Thursday, but that was a fun-filled day of work with stories for another time.) Well, as it turned out, my brother David and his son were going to go camping and so my niece was feeling sad and wanted to do something fun too. So, she and her mom had come up with the idea to have a princess party.  As a result, when my mom called, Sariah said, "Would it be all right if it were a princess party?" Well, of course! Mom actually called me to verify, since I was at work at that time. But that sounded fun to me. How many grown women get away with having a princess birthday party? Happily, mom called the other locals, and John's family were able to come, too. In fact, their little girl loves to dress up, as I thought she would.

On Friday night, as I was between sleep and awake from my nap, I decided I needed to dress up pretty fancy myself, and so I showered and pulled out an old bride's maid dress I had from 1999. I even put make up on, which I very rarely do, and capped off the costume with an actual cap--a tiara. Before long, my ladies arrived, almost all dressed very prettily. One, however, had to borrow a dress from Grandma, but it turned out to be an excellent opportunity to let us have an Indian princess amongst us. It's not often we get an Indian princess at great princess parties, you know.

Of course, it wouldn't be much of a party without princes. We were quite happy to have the young men join us, too!

 And, of course, the King and Queen must be included as they threw the party for us all!