10: My Friends – The Annual Reunion

Day66_Everyone Every year I gather a group of girls and their husbands for a reunion at my house. They come from everywhere: Fort Collins, Pueblo, south of Grand Junction, and even from Kansas to spend the evening reminiscing about all the fun we have had together. Getting to see them all together makes this one of my favorite days of the year.

Day66_OurRoomsFor my first year of college I attended the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.  I lived in a dorm called McCowen Hall made famous in 1996 by a hostage situation resulting in the death of an 18-year-old who killed three of his friends execution style in Durango and then drove to Greeley to hold his ex-girlfriend hostage in one of the rooms. The hall has since been demolished. This picture was taken where my dorm room used to be.

In four dorm rooms lined up side-by side on the fourth floor lived eight girls – Jodi, Emily, Megan, Katy, Monica, Anne, Lisa, and myself – who formed such amazing friendships that 15 years later we remain friends. We had so much fun together in the first year of college we all decided to rent a house together for year two. My job was to find the house. After some research I found a run down yellow house on [what was the address again? 1123 First Street or something?], also made famous, we later discovered, by a man who had hacked up his wife and shoved her in the cabinet years prior.

Day66_MollyOne night in January, I visited a good friend from high school named Corrie who attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. We spent nearly an hour in an unfamiliar area looking for a party. At about 11pm we gave up and headed back when a very animated and friendly guy yelled out to us from the balcony of a condo. After a short conversation we went upstairs and met an extremely fun group of people including this fiery redhead named Molly and another guy who later became my boyfriend. We partied with this crowd until the sun came up.

That summer, right about the time I financially committed the Greeley girls to the yellow murder house, I decided I wanted to go to the School of Business at CU in Boulder. How was i going to manage that without royally pissing off my favorite girls?

Day66_CharaIn the meantime, the CU boyfriend had introduced me to an amazing group of people in Boulder including a lovely girl named Chara. Chara thought I was a complete bimbo when we met and secretly referred to me as “chickee” but later became my roommate and one of my best friends in the best apartment in Boulder. Chara introduced me to an absolute spitfire named Kindra at Casa Bonita just before I helped move her mom’s dishes out of the home of a crazy man. While we sat on the floor wrapping dishes this spunky girl mentioned that she was going to attend UNC in Greeley in the fall and needed a place to live!

Day66_KindraThe Greeley girls were pretty pissed when they learned I was replacing myself with some stranger. And when Kindra met the Greeley girls who were hung over on the couch at 2:00 in the afternoon she was a little uncertain as well. But Kindra, a constant source of entertainment, immediately found a place in the Greeley crowd and I moved to Chara’s gorgeous apartment in Boulder.

And that is an incredibly condensed version how two of the most screwed up boys in Boulder were responsible for bringing together an amazing group of girlfriends that will get together at least once a year until we all turn old and grey.

Day67_CrazyGirls I love these girls. They are amazing people, great friends, very loving wives and mothers, and best of all an absolute riot. Though they all lead very responsible adult lives they all still have that spark. Kids at heart that still love to have a great time together and most of all to laugh.

True story: Last night a very pregnant Monica was standing by the fridge with a plastic cup full of water. The cup cracked and spilled water all over the floor. Someone asked “what happened?” to which Katy replied “her water broke”!