Something old, something new...

This is a story for Blakely. It is a little history about her mom's friendships, with a fairy tale ending. ;)

When I was in high school I had two very best friends. One was a girl. One was a boy. Your dad thinks I'm crazy because I call everyone my best friend, but these were my #1's. My #1 girl friend and my #1 guy friend.

Jenna, Jenna Pecor. We used to sing eachother's name opera style from across the room. I am not sure what started this, but I can still hear in my head what it sounded like. Karen, Karen Gaskill..... and Jenna, Jenna Pecor. We were two peas in a pod. Completely opposite, yet exactly alike. We both loved being dramatic. We loved to laugh and make others laugh. We also both loved being bossy and the center of attention! :) Jenna and I loved to watch movies. We would quote Wayne's World & Tommy Boy all the time. We also memorized skits from Saturday Night Live.... and then we performed them for other people. Our youth minister in High School actually called us over to their apartment once to perform the skit for his parents that had come in from out of town. The spartan cheerleader skit, that was our specialty. Our first fight lasted a commercial break during a Friends episode we were watching. That's it. We were mad during the commercial break, then we were over it. Jenna and I used to entertain ourselves by making collages out of magazines. We also once made a cassette tape of ourselves making animal noises. Yes, your mom had a weird way of entertaining herself.... but so did Jenna. She was fun. We laughed at everything we did. That's what made being her best friend so much fun! We grew up in the same youth group together so we also had our faith in common. I hope you get involved in a youth group when you get older. I will always treasure my Inglewood Baptist youth group days. Jenna and I once sat in her kitchen talking about the rapture and how it could happen at any second. Then we started screaming. Happy screams. Excited screams. Then screams of laughter, when we realized we were both screaming. We talked about everything. Boys mostly. We definitely experienced our share of boy troubles together. Jenna was always very independent though. Even when she was upset about a boy, she always kept her cool. Not your mother. I'm very emotional. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I was usually the one that said or did things in the moment then regretted them later. Not Jenna. She was smart. Very poised. I loved that about her. She always kept her cool and was a much stronger person than I was.

Jason Whitehead. The boy version of myself in highschool. I used to always tell everyone that. I loved sports in highschool. I still do. In highschool I actually played the sports though. Now I just tend to watch. I met Jason when I was in third grade and he was in 4th. He was dating my friend Erica. Dont get any ideas. You will not date until your 18. or 21. possibly 30. Jason and I loved to play basketball. I would go over to his house on Sunday afternoons and we would play basketball in the driveway. Or he would come over to my grandparents and we would play basketball over there. Sometimes whichever girl or guy we would like at the time would join us. I dated his friends and he dated mine. We never dated eachother. That is probably why we were always such good friends. We were literally like brother and sister. If a girl wanted to date Jason. They became friends with me. Or they asked my advice about him. I cant remember a time where it was ever weird to have a guy best friend. Our friendship just worked. I hope you have a good guy friend that will look out for you when your growing up and your parents arent around. Someone that will give you advice and explain to you why some guys are jerks.

This picture makes me laugh. We both looked very young and alarmed. ha!

As a best friend to both of them we all definitely hung out together. I can remember Jenna and Jason liking the other, several different times in the years we were all friends. Usually it was at different times though. He would like her and she would like someone else. Or vice versa. After swimming at Jenna's one day I remember Jason telling me he wished she would just date him, instead of another guy Jenna liked at the time. He said, "Mrs. Pecor loves me.... all the mom's love me." For some reason that still makes me laugh. He was right, the mom's always did love him. Jenna was just a hard catch. She was always one step ahead of the boys. She liked them, then when they liked her she moved on to the next. :) Jenna loved the chase, she would just never let them catch her.

Now. Fast forward 10 years or so. I found out this past summer that Jason and Jenna had reconnected after all these years and were now dating. Shocked? Yes! Excited? Yes! However, it totally fit! They totally fit! Jason sent me a message a few weeks ago telling me that he was going to propose to Jenna and he wanted some of her friends and family to meet up on Monday the 19th to celebrate after he did it. It was obviously a surprise to Jenna. (here is her story) You got to come to Cheesecake Factory with mom to celebrate. I was so excited for the both of them and that you got to meet them. Maybe when you get a little older you can ask Jenna to tell you her engagement story and how she finally let a boy catch her. I always love hearing how people got engaged, so I think you will too.

I took this picture from Brooke's blog. Tanna & I got Jenna an engagement gift with her new future last name.