College Roommate Reunion

 Back in April, one of my old Ricks College Roommate contacted me to ask if I had remembered somebody that we used to go to school with. That whole conversation got me thinking that I hadn't seen my old college roommates for 15 years!!! All of us are now married and have lots of kids between us, and it was time that we all saw each other!!!

 Fast forward until now...we decided to meet up for a college roommate reunion in Arlington Texas because there was a time out for women event going on, and Emily was 1 week away from delivering a baby so we needed to stay close to her home!!!

                   ** Natalie, Emily, Michelle, Shannon and Andrea **
So a little history on how I got paired with these awesome ladies back in 1998-2000...I was graduating from high school and getting ready to go to Ricks College {now BYU-Idaho} and I made a very critical decision that I now can say shaped me into the person I am today.

All of my Draper friends were planning on rooming together in some brand new apartments in Rexburg and for some reason, I felt like it was the right decision for me to not join them and to go on my own. I decided to live in a place called Birch apartments that were not as nice as their new apartments, and I decided to live with roommates that I had never met! Huge decision on my part because it was wayyyyy out of my comfort zone. I wanted to be close to campus {especially since I didn't have a car} and wanted to branch out and meet new people.

I really lucked out and met these awesome ladies, all from Plano, Texas!!! I was the odd man out, not being from Texas, but these ladies included me and embraced me! We had SOO many fun adventures and experiences together, and after all of these years, we still have so much in common!

 We started out our roommate reunion by getting some good old Texas food at a BBQ place called Babes! That plate full of chicken could have fed all of our kids!!!

 We then went to the time out for women event in Arlington and heard some great messages and made fun of the Mormon Boy Band entertainment!!

 Shannon and I were actual room roommates and had so many experiences together. She now lives in Idaho and it was a lot of fun to reconnect with her.

 The next day, we did a tour of Dallas! We slept in, went to McDonalds in our pi's for breakfast, then went to Reunion Tower which gives you a 360 view of Dallas! It was awesome!!! We had lunch in the tower and by the time we were done eating lunch, we had moved 360 degrees around because the tables moved continuously, yet subtly!

 Dallas was an awesome city!

 This activity was so fitting since we were on a roommate reunion, going to reunion tower!

We got an awesome pedicure...

 We wore twinner shirts...

 We reenacted a photo we took in 1999...

 We ate at the Hard Rock in Dallas, we saw an awesome movie {The hundred foot journey}, we talked a ton in our cute hotel room, we looked through old college scrapbooks...

We had SOOO much fun! I am so glad I was able to get together with these cute ladies! They are all examples to me and I am so glad we have kept in contact all of these years! The decision to move on my own proved to be a great decision. Not only did I make some new friends, but I also branched out and became my own person. It made me more outgoing and made me find myself instead of relying on comfort.

Did I mention I also discovered that I am allergic to eye shadow on this trip? My eye was so swollen and I seriously looked like a crazy person on my flight back to Ohio!!!