Jenna

This is Jenna-

With salty breeze in her hair at the Oragen cost.

When I was in High school, Jenna and I ran with the same crowd. . . that was about it, I would have called her a "friend" but not to the point where I ever thought of calling her up to hang out. She was quiet and I was crazy.

Our senior year Jenna's family packed up and moved to Florida. . and I remember at lunch one day before she left she handed out to a few people little slips of paper with her new address on it (I may have this story wrong, it was a while ago, thats how I remember it)

And at the time I worked at Hallmark, so being the queen of cards, I decided to send her a one.

Then she wrote me back.
So i wrote again.
Then her.

And that was it, I have been writing her for 7 years now. She would send me butterflies from florida, and things she had bought in the florida keys.
And I would sent her hallmark cards. . . and it became so easy for me write. I wrote everything, all about my loser high school boyfriend, about my family, about things that I didn't talk to people about.

She is so different then me, she loves to write and has such a way with words, she can spell. I loved getting her letters, a different view on life.

And it was so easy to write to a person that only lived in a pen pal world. . . I think Jenna knows more about me then my Mother sometimes.

And our lifes have changed, she is married now with three kids now moved to Oregon then back to Utah, and I went on my mission and bounced around from place to place. Yet we still write, and find things that are in common. . . . long letters, on a weekly-ish basis. . I love it, such a unique relationship, Who would have thought out of all my high school friends Jenna would have been one of the friendships that last the longest?

I think the both of us get nervous to hang out in real life. Mostly because I know a ton about her, and she about me, so when I see her after not seeing her for years the standard "whats new?" questions don't apply.

Last Friday I drove up to her home in Clearfeild, and together we made a birthday cake for her 2-year-old daughter. . She made dinner, and we sat on the grass with her little family and did Disney trivia with her little girl.

The cake turned out real cute. But the conversation and being in her home was the best part.

She has such a great family. I love that her little girls look like her, and she has taught them to be so kind and sweet, and I love that when I leave the house she loads me up with snacks for the road.

I think I will write her until the day I die, and love every second of it. She has helped me see things in ways that I never could on my own, and I have her fooled into thinking I'm amazing, and she has such a way of making me feel good about the things I do in my life.

Here is to you Jenna, My dear friend, I'm so glad I have you.