People I Love: Sara

There are friends in your life that make an impact on you and your life. They are the ones who through thick & thin you KNOW you can turn to. The ones that you have more stories together then you can count. The memories, experiences and life lessons that you had together really meant something and STILL mean something.

Sara is one of those friends to me. There's not a person in the world that I get more dancey & silly with. We're not normal.

Sara and I went to preschool together, and we were the "Queen Bees "of that little church preschool. After preschool we went our separate ways but over the years I always remember her name coming up with soccer friends and other friends who went to her elementary and middle school.

Sara Gliebe is not one to forget.

During our freshman orientation I wanted to reconnect and meet as many people as I could from the other main middle school that our high school was combining with. And when I saw Sara (and her older sis Lexie) I walked right up to them and re-introduced myself.

Our friendship snowballed from there and we instantly hit it off. As Sara recalls I was the funky, slightly dorky friend with a camera around her neck.

Um not much has changed, right?

Sara's family even "took me in" when my parents got divorced. I needed an escape and Sara's family let me stay over EVERY single weekend of Sophomore year when I was dealing with my changed home life. I needed an outlet and being silly with Sara was the direction I took.

We did stuff like driving around town, squirting people with squirt guns, ordering Big Macs from Jack in the Box or sitting "farmer style" (Lexie, Sara and I sitting three to the front in Lexie's station wagon).

We were WEIRD!

Oh and we wanted Facebook before there was Facebook. We would drive around town just to see what people were up to, sometimes taking unexpected pictures of people when they were getting out of their cars to use the local payphone (yup, I'm that old).

This behavior which we found to be silly was not understood by the popular senior girls and eventually Sara and I were dubbed the "Stalker Bitches" and were significantly harassed (rumors were spread, people tried to run us over, someone even had a loud speaker in their car which people would get on and yell at us as we walked to our cars). I even had someone do an "11" (peeling out) on my parents front lawn. Some of our friends even joined in on the fun because, well, it was cool. The senior girls and boys were doing it.

All Sara and I wanted to do was laugh, dance and be silly.

But Sara and I stood strong, we knew that behind closed doors people really liked us. Although the constant bullying lead us to make some poor decisions, which eventually resulted in us attending the local community college. Soon after Sara moved to San Diego and our paths drifted apart once again. We kept in touch, and saw each other once year when Sara was in town for Christmas. But we were never as close as we were in high school.

Back in August when I announced my divorce Sara was one of the first people to call and see how I was. She invited me to come down to Hermosa Beach and stay with her for Labor Day weekend, I already had plans to go to Oregon so I thanked her for the invite and promised I would take her up on the offer.

When I hung up the phone I thought about my schedule and realized I didn't have plans for the following weekend, and I immediately called her back and I asked if that weekend would work, luckily it did. I booked a flight went down. Right away Sara and I picked up right back where we left off. And I couldn't have been happier about it.

I'm so happy to have Sara in my life, back in my life, and am MORE then grateful to have a new place to couch surf on the regular. And I'm SO HAPPY to have my favorite tiny dancer back in my life.

It's funny how the more things change the more they stay the same.

Never forgot those people, friendships and experiences that changed and shaped your life.

I know I never will.

LOVE YOU SARA & THE WHOLE G-CLAN!!