Picnic Surprise with Susie Paas!

Yesterday was an absolutely terrific day! My darling friend Missy (bless her 1000 times over) brought me the most precious, awesome, and wonderful gift…that of a long lost friend I hadn’t seen since BEFORE my mission (so over 10 years ago). In order to capture the awesomeness of this gift though, I must go back to my earlier years of teenage-hood.

Around the time I was 15 my parents sold our home in Lehi and bought some property in Alpine and started building their dream home. So that next year I started attending American Fork High School as a Sophomore. On one of my very first days, I met who would become one of my very best friends that year. Korby Hadley. Go Psycho Women! 🙂 (Sorry inside joke) Korby also lived in Alpine and was just 4-5 blocks away from my home and through her I was introduced to several other WONDERFUL women. One of which was Susie Paas who lived just a few houses down from Korby. We all became VERY good friends that year and experienced many adventures together (such as getting into a roll-over accident on a girls choice dance date)
learning how tampons were REALLY used, and how much fun bandaids could be! It was such an awesome year! Sadly after that wonderful school year ended, Susie graduated and although we still kept contact up until my mission, we lost track of each other afterwards.

UNTIL….yesterday! So darling sweet wonderful Missy (who married one of my very good guy friends Joey Jurgens from my old singles ward) figured out a few years/months ago that we had a connection with Susie Paas. Susie and Missy had been in the same singles ward back when Missy and Joey were dating (I was already married), and they had become really good friends through the ward and had been there through one anothers courtships. So when Missy realized I also knew Susie she put together a little surprise for me!

We had planned to have a picnic here in Payson with Missy, Sammy and Will, and within minutes of them arriving at our house, there was another knock on the door. “Oh I’ll get it,” Missy volunteered as I was making Tuna fish sandwiches. I was confused because I wasn’t expecting anyone, and quickly followed her into the livingroom to sneak a peek through our living room window at who it could be. I saw a tall beautiful woman standing on the doorstep holding a little girl, but had absolutely NO idea who she was. Missy opened the door and hugged her though, and my mind finally put two and two together and I realized what she had done. Susie and I hugged several times and just were SO excited to see each other. She looked absolutely fantastic and we gabbed and gabbed and gabbed learning about each others lives over the past 10 years. It was absolutely a riot! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you MISSY for your wonderful surprise! You are such a treasured friend to me and I love your guts to death! 🙂 Here are some pictures of our picnic reunioin!

Three friends together for the first time! I so love these gals!