Has It Really Been That Long?????

I hadn't planned to continue my trek down memory lane tonight, but here I am doing just that. I'll throw in a new sunset photo I took tonight to make up for it to those of you not interested in glimpses of my past. :0)

I introduced you to some of our Arizona friends, including "Tree" here. Tree and I have been emailing off and on for a couple of years, after having lost touch for several years. We talked long ago, right after graduation from tech school, about having a reunion of all our Arizona friends. It never happened and most of us have lost touch. This evening we began discussing that again. We haven't seen most of those friends since we graduated tech school in 1991. The rest (except for Dar) we haven't seen since 1993 when Marty and I left Arizona for the last time. We have decided to have a "Friends" reunion in Arizona in 2009 and he and I split up the list of the group to try to find them all and contact them. We've talked about this for years and now we're finally doing something about it! It will be so much fun to see them all again!

Here's Tree back then, in a picture taken at his wedding:

Here's a more recent photo of him I swiped from his myspace page:

On top of that trek down memory lane, I also checked my messages at classmates.com. I rarely do that. Since I don't have a paid account I wasn't even sure if I could send and receive messages there, so it was a fluke that I even checked. I logged on to classmates so I could go to the tech school and see if I could locate some of our friends from AZ there. I never got that far. I had a message from my buddy Rusty (who prefers to be called Russell now) from third grade!!! I haven't seen or talked to him since we were seniors in high school. I was just telling someone about him this week. Russell and I used to play together in grade school. He is also to blame for a scar I have on my knuckle! He stepped on my hand in third grade, leaving me scarred for life. :0) He's also the one to give me my childhood nickname that I've always hated and won't share with anyone. (Regina if you say a word I'll make you regret it!!!) I hope he doesn't mind, but I'm sharing his message here:

I don't know if you recognize me, I haven't gone by the name Rusty for
years and years...Some of my fondest grade school memories are the ones of us
giggling in third and fourth grade.You could always make me laugh really hard.
You have a nice looking family and I just wanted to say hello and thanks for the
fond memories. Hope you are doing well.

This is our third grade class oh so long ago:

It was so funny to hear from Russell today. I was just telling Marty a story about him this week!!! Isn't it fun how a simple message can take you back to relive those fun moments of long ago?