high school

I went through some old pictures today, from high school, so 17 years ago!

It was fun to look through them: I really loved high school. I sure miss my waistline, perfect skin, skinny tan legs and most of all the school and church dances! I don’t miss my braces, my big surgery senior year, girl drama or homework.

I loved it while I was there, but I’m glad I’m where I am in life. Happy to be married to my best friend and the mother of 6 children. Glad for the ups and downs life has been. I’ve learned a lot and hopefully matured some. I like adulthood, although being an adult and parent can be rough! I was a pretty cool teenager though and now 2 of my children are teens!

My brother Andy and I finally became friends in high school. I don’t think we had a single fight (we sure had our share as kids), we confided in each other and often stayed up late chatting. He was my best friend and we are still close. I only had him at high school with me fro my freshman and sophomore years. We had a lot of similar friends and hung out often in groups that had siblings around both our ages. We went to a lot of church dances together. Duerks good friend Brett used to drive us in his big van that had bucket seats and afterword's we would go to Denny’s or Ihop.

There wasn’t a lot of LDS kids at our high school, but enough for 1 or 2 early morning seminary classes and a lot of the kids were from a different stake. There was only a few of us in my actual class, but a couple girls that were the year behind me, names Sandra and LeAnne, who became my dear friends.

Sandra and I at my 16th birthday party at my freind Marlo’s home. 

Then Andy left me and went to college at NAU in Flagstaff. My mom took Sandra and I on a trip to see him. It was fun and the snow and icicles amazed this Phoenix girl.

I think this trip was from Junior year and the rest of these girls were Sophomores, I seemed to bounce back to my friends that were my grade level and the grade just under me and a little with the grade 2 years under me. I was super social. LeAnne’s mom took a group of us on a trip and we slept in this camper. It was especially fun, because it was before any of my friends really started partying/drinking.

We went to Laura Johnsons b-day party in this hummer, off roading thing and it was so fun.

Sandra, me, LeAnne and Katie

Friends in my ward, half of us went to Washington and the other half to Cortez. My best friend Julie Tieman and I only went to the same Junior High.

I don’t remember the tall girls name…Anne maybe? My friends Hope, Marlo and LeAnne all did dance and taught me, so I could tap in the high school play, I still remember a lot of steps from that dance.

I have a ton of pictures from Duke Photography, who did a lot of our Spirit week and dance pictures.

Me, LeAnne, Katie and Katie

Several Junior and Senior girls got together and made spirit shirts to wear to the football game.

We occasionally ate at Ed Debevic’s. I think this was for the Sadie Hawkin’s dance, when I asked Eric Peter’s, but he still didn’t let me pay for dinner.

These were my good friends Katie (sophomore) and Sarah (Senior like me).

Senior girlies- PJ day

Marlo, Hope, Sarah, Amanda, Elizabeth and I

I had several friends at Cortez and Apollo, since our stake was large enough to be in different school boundaries. My friend Sheila from my Stake, threw me a surprise party and invited my friends from Washington, Cortez and Apollo. She did this party because I was about to have a hip surgery (January of my Senior year). It was so fun and you can tell from the pictures that I was so surprised. They told me we were going out for a friends b-day dinner. I had some amazing friends.

These were my friends from Apollo: Chanda, (me), Brooke, Sara & Becky. I got to know all of them from my stake girls camp, except for Sara, who wasn’t LDS, I met her through them.

We went out for dinner before my hip surgery.

Brett, Adam, Duerk and Matt (he is the guy in Studio C now) came to visit me after my surgery. I had lots of friends who would come over suring lunch to visit me before I could go back to school. My friend David Burtch even lent me several pajama pants to wear, since I couldn’t wear jeans for awhile, it just hurt too much.

My best friend Sarah Thompson, we had photography together and she was awesome to me when I had my surgery and had to go to school in a wheelchair. She later became my room mate in college, but it didn’t work out like I hoped and now we aren’t close anymore. I did see her at Jeff Roof’s funeral awhile back, like 5 years ago and we sat with each other, but it’s not the same.

And so was Katie! We had student council together.

The highlight of high school was being in student council my sophomore, junior and senior years. It was my favorite class and I loved that I got to be in a class with freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. I met a ton of people and had friends of all ages this way.

Some of my closest junior friends, that I had to leave behind when I graduated.

There’s a few pictures from high school and a fun trip down memory lane. It feels like it wasn’t that long and go, but forever a go, all at once. I feel older, yet younger. I’ve aged, but I also feel younger now that I have 2 new hips. In high school I would hurt after all the dances and limped a lot. Now my hips are metal and don’t hurt. It’s like I’m older, but younger all at once.