dear sarah

i love the 4th of july. isn't it the best? how can you not feel american when spending a whole day at parades, eating hot dogs, swimming, and watching fireworks? i had a much needed break from school in salt lake this weekend and it. was. amazing. i love rexburg. but sometimes i just need some salt lake lovin'.

anyway, i spent most of my weekend with sarah. in case you didn't know, sarah is my oldest friend. not old as in she's 35 and i'm 20. old as in, we've been besties since preschool. sarah remembers the first time we met. she thought that my family was black (only in my dreams...) i don't remember meeting her but that's only because my brain can only hold so many memories, and when it comes to sarah and rachael, there are a lot.

in kindergarten, sarah, ben, and i would go to her house behind the mortuary and eat macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and jump around the swing set pretending the ground was lava. we also turned my swing set into the poop machine, where different ladders and ropes were different parts of the digestive system and the finale was the slide pooping us out (don't judge.) later in elementary school, we spent many hours roaming around the gully and reading scary stories in her closet with a flashlight. we sometimes skied together, but mostly we just fell down the mountain together. in middle school, we wrote notes in class and fell in love with michael phelps. in high school, we laid in her bed and read scriptures or sat on my roof and talked about life and first kisses (they are synonymous subjects, you know.) we had some really unforgettable experiences together.

my favorite story to tell people about sarah is from when we were in mexico painting houses together. i was rolling ceilings and she was cutting edges. one day, everybody was done with one of the houses except for me. everyone was exhausted and taking a break to eat lunch while i was finishing. i was being so dumb and irritated because i had the biggest knot in my neck from rolling all day and i was hungry. sarah could tell i was in a bad mood and ran in to roll with me, even though she hadn't done it before. even though i was still cranky, she was understanding and stayed to help me roll while everyone was eating lunch together.

now sarah is at utah state and i'm at byu-idaho. we don't see each other every day. so it was really good to have a sarah/rachael weekend. we played at the park, went to the temple, jumped on the tramp, watched twilight zone with her family (obsessed!), sat on the roof almost every night with my family, and decided it was the ideal summer weekend.

i love you, sarah! thanks for this weekend and the past 15 years :) we better have a good future ahead of us together.

(this picture is so pitiful...and yet it captures the essence of us so well.)