"Look what I found!"

Tomorrow is Brianne's birthday. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Instead, I'll update today. :-)

Ok, so what story to share about Brianne? There are so many! The tears, the laughter, the just plain stupid... They day I drove home at like 10pm to be the only one home except for the car waiting outside my driveway who blinded me with their headlights... The time she "cleaned my room" (and by "cleaned" we mean took everything out of the drawers then said she had to go home)... Then there are so many camp stories like the time we got peanut buttered... the endless conversations at 3 am (accompanied by phone calls from her roommate...)... The late-night on the moon bounce at my graduation party...

How do you sum up five years of memories in one blog? How do you pick your favorite? You rely on text messages from the source! I got a text message from her this weekend and it reminded me of a funny story I'm just going to have to share.

Brianne loves camp fires. Like REALLY loves camp fires. After sophomore year we were set to have one as a big group of people and Brianne came over early to help gather some wood from the woods behind my house. We'd collected several armloads of wood and had enough to keep the fire going for much longer than we would need. I'd left the woods and was working on something else in the backyard but made the mistake of allowing Brianne to gather on her own... She was behind the trees to where I couldn't see her, yet we were still talking.

"Perfect!" I heard her exclaim. A few minutes later she came out of the woods dragging a tree. Not just a lot of fire wood. Not just a really big branch. The whole stinkin' tree! There were still leaves on the top of it and everything! I asked her if she took and ax back there and chopped it down and she said no. I broke off a branch and sure enough, it wasn't green (I was glad otherwise I was going to make her...er... go put it back??). This tree took up half the back yard! We already had a plethora of sticks to burn and now we had a whole tree, too! I figured we'd chop the branches off said tree and burn the actual trunk later otherwise we'd be there all night. Brianne wasn't so keen on my idea but she enjoyed the idea of being there all night. She put the top of the tree in the fire pit and the other half stretched halfway to the swing set! (You think I'm kidding!) We lit the fire, made s'mores, and were enjoying good company. (I won't tell you that was the same bonfire we burned out chemistry notes, too...). Every now and again Brianne would stand up, grab the tree by the trunk and push it further and further into the pit. I was scared the tree was going to catch fire and her tree was going to burn all of our nice grass (Yes, I am a pyropohe). Brianne, on the other hand, had a blast! To this day, whenever she comes over for a bonfire I am forced to remind her what kind of sticks we like for fires and what kind of trees should be left alone... and she laughs remembering our first bonfire.

Love ya, girl! Happy Birthday!

<>< Katie

"David danced before the Lord with all his might." - 2 Samuel 6:14a