Shout out

A few weeks ago Jane said "you should give me a shout out on your blog".

Because of course, my blog is almost exactly the same thing as being in the audience of TRL with Carson Daly and being given the opportunity to say hi to your friends back at home. Yeah, pretty much exactly like that. (Is TRL even still on MTV? Or is MTV just all about the reality shows these days?)

So Jane, because Sunday is your 36th birthday, here is your shout out.
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I have known Jane for 30 years. We were in Mrs. Johnson's first grade class together. Mrs. Johnson was British and would say "bloody" a lot. As in: "pick up your bloody books!" and "you kids are bloody loud!" One time, we were playing on the big concrete tunnel at the far end of the playground and didn't hear the bell, so when we finally realized that the playground was empty we went back in to class, and we were sure that Mrs. Johnson would yell at us. But she didn't.

Not a very exciting story, sorry.

Jill was also in first grade with Jane and me, and Jill and I used to fight over who got to sit with Jane at lunch. I thought I had a picture of Jane from the first grade but I can't find it.

However, I did find these:

Pictures of my 10th birthday party. Jane is the one peeking slyly out from behind the arm of the couch in the first picture and peeking slyly at my mom on the left side of the second picture. Apparently, peeking slyly was Jane's shtick at my 10th birthday party. [side note: that's mint chocolate chip ice cream my mom is scooping...my favorite type, which she made with my grandma's ice cream maker. my mom is so cool.]

Jane had two (TWO!!) cabbage patch kid dolls and would generously let me play with one when I came over. I remember one was named Ollie. Also, Jane's room had funky wallpaper that looked like yellow, green, pink and white quilt squares. Jane has two older sisters so we were able to raid their Sweet Dreams romance books. I think the one we always talked about was "P.S. I Love You" about a 15 year old girl that falls in love (true love, of course) one summer. Of course, now that I think about it, most of the books were about 15 year old girls that fall in love (true love, of course) over a summer.

In the sixth grade I invited Jane to come with my family on a vacation to Crescent Bar.

Hmm. I guess the peeking slyly thing lasted through sixth grade, too. [side note: the baby backside in the terry cloth summerwear is my sister Laura's.]

In the 7th grade, we went Christmas shopping and decided to get our picture taken with Santa.

Looks like peeking slyly was handed off to Santa that year.

Later in the seventh grade, during a sleepover night, Jane and I decided to venture out into the cold and dressed appropriately for the weather in my dad's coats.
I don't really know when it started, but Jane would/does talk in funny voices and ALWAYS made/makes me laugh.

In junior high I had a crush on Josh Smith. Jane was in a class with him and he corrected her paper (you know how teachers would do the 'hand your paper to the person behind you for correction' thing). Jane ripped the corner out of her paper where he'd written "corrected by Josh Smith" and gave it to me. Now that's a good friend. Of course, Jane also - to this day - makes fun of me for wearing my girl scout uniform to school in the sixth grade, when I TOTALLY didn't, because I wasn't in girl scouts past the fourth grade...but that's not the point of this post.

In the 9th grade, we were all sad the last day of school because half the kids were going to a different high school.
[right about now I'm guessing that Jane is thinking of the old adage "be careful what you wish for" as she reads this shout out post]

Jane and I went to the same high school, but hardly had any classes together. Sophomore year we had Band together, where she met Bon - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Senior year we had Health together. Even though Jane and I didn't have a lot of contact at school and spent much of our time with different groups of friends, I always appreciated that we could pick up easily where we left off.

Right after I turned 19, a group of us went up to Canada to go dancing (ok, let's be honest...we went up to Canada because the drinking age there was 19, and we thought we were being sooooo rebellious!).
After graduating from college, Jane and I got an apartment together. It had a vaulted ceiling in the living room and the first Christmas we decided to go to a u-cut farm and get a really tall tree. Little did we know that really tall trees are correspondingly really expensive. I think it was around $70. For a Christmas tree! A tree that you cut down and then spend three weeks vacuuming up after!

Anyway, this is a picture of us getting in to the spirit of cutting our own tree:
I think we must have just seen Austin Powers, thus the explanation for the pose.

As previously mentioned Jane met Bon in highschool and they began dating. But not until after Jane went to Homecoming our Sophomore year with Jim, who wore green and navy plaid pants. That really has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to remember Jim's plaid pants for a minute because it makes me smile.

I think this is Jane & Bon's engagement picture.

I have no idea why this picture makes me want to laugh out loud. Is it the oh-so-casually posed arm Bon has around Jane? Is it the "hey, let's try a senior portrait pose for this picture" feel of the shot? I have no idea. But, the only engagement photos Bret and I have are taken by my mom in my parent's kitchen with her cupboards in the background. So I probably shouldn't give in to the out loud laughter when I look at this picture.

Jane asked me to be the Maid of Honor for her St Patrick's Day/2001: A Space Odyssey wedding. It was definitely an honor! These are pictures from her bachelorette party:
I got her practical underwear.

And a not so practical nightgown. [side note: that must be the guy who Santa passed on the peeking slyly gig to.]

Jane ended the evening with solo karaoke. I think a few margaritas may have contributed to the occasion.

This is a picture from Jane's wedding day:
I doubt we had just seen Austin Powers before her wedding so I really don't know what our excuse was for this pose. [side note: would you look at the size of my arms?? and worse, compare them to Jane's arms??]

Bon's into photography and took wonderful pictures at our wedding! This is one of my top 5 favorite pictures from the whole day:

After we had Gabe, Jane offered up Bon's photography talents for baby pics. We met at my parent's house and had a REAL photo shoot: big camera, light umbrella flash thingies, and all!

This is Jane with her adorable young 'uns, Jack and Emma (and of course, Gabe...because you can never have too many pictures of Gabriel, I always say).

Bon got awesome pictures of Gabe - here's a link to his blog: http://regalaphotography.bigfolioblog.com/

These are a couple of my favorites:


I think I will soon be making the above picture the new header art of this blog. But I digress (as I often do when I get started looking at pictures of my kid!).

As a summary of my shout out to Jane, I will recite a poem I wrote many many moons ago:

Fishies swim, birdies fly

Janey's weird and so am I.

Happy Birthday, Jane!