a post about poor people. or, its almost annie's birthday!

happy 27th birthday anastasia!

tomorrow, december 13th, is my lifelong best friend's 27th birthday.  first of all, holy cow, we are old.  second of all, it makes me somewhat reflective of the years and YEARS that we have been friends. 

we met (we think) when i was about 2.5 and she was a wittle baby.  our parents were some of the first to live on our street, saxon drive.  (both of our parents still live there).  we were two houses down from each other, with the good ol' zenzens in the middle of us, and we would walk to the middle and sing that country song "meet in the middle", i think by diamond rio.  its funny to hear that now because its about a dude and his wife getting over fights. ha.

so anyway, i wanted to honor anastasia's (annie, stais, anniebanannie, etc) birthday by sharing some memories, random thoughts, and fun facts about her. 

• she was born on december 13th, in room 13, at like 11:13am, and there were all these other weird 13 statistics....shes lucky like that :)
• we played SO MANY WEIRD GAMES as kids.  some of the most popular favorites include: poor people, cops and robbers (on bikes), traffic, water wars, let's climb a tree (and strap ourselves in), where are the weird places we can read (top of my closet and the bushes takes this win), where are the weird places we can eat lunch (on top of the washer and dryer), chug apple juice from baby bottles, guess what food i am putting in your mouth as you are blindfolded, teen secrets, bear date night, snail, and i am sure there are many more i cant think of.  but yes, it has been confirmed that we were the weirdest kids ever. 
• she used to be the pickyest eater in the entire world.  now, she will try anything once and actually eats way more types of food than i do. 
• she is russian, like hardcore russian, and has no middle name.  neither do her dad, brother, and mom.  :) 
• shes about to get married in less than 3 months! 
• shes a teacher. 
• we went to the same elementary school, high school, and college, but she went to thornton and i went to labay jr high.  
• she always had the best birthday parties as a kid. some of the best were wizard of oz and beauty pageant.  
• keeping with that theme, shes two years and one month younger than me, and i was always abnormally tall for my age, so all her friends at her birthday parties were like a whole head or more shorter than me. you'd think i would feel weird being the old kid at the party, but nope. i loved it all the same.  :) 
• she says VERY random things, especially when shes tipsy.  "You laugh at me today, I laugh at you tomorrow!"
• we went through a phase (and were way too old to be doing this) where we would only drink out of baby bottles.  weird, i know. i think it was like jr high when we were doing this. 
• as kids, we had big dramatic fights now and again where we wouldnt talk for a bit, but as adults, i think we can count on one finger the number of times one of us has pissed the other one off. i think its because we both say it like it is and dont sugarcoat. ha. 
• she thinks cats, especially cat videos on youtube, are the funniest things ever. i tend to concur. 
• we went to see the final harry potter movie together, and were literally sitting there SOBBING together.  SOBBING. it was somewhat embarassing. i am sure that the two bottles of wine before/during the movie didnt help. 
• her mom, and her whole family, are like my family. they are seriously the nicest, best people you will ever meet. and the quirkiest. hehe. 
• once on a family vacay to the beach, she brought her own food, because she was so picky, and it was these tuna patties things that her mom made.  she had a cooler of them with a note on the top that said "Anastasia's Food".  
• one time she told me this HUGE secret, that she made me swear i wouldnt tell her mom about, and the secret was, verbatim, "I think I wouldn't throw up if I ate salad."  

there are many, many more stories and things that I love about this person.  she is my little bebe (seriously, shes tiny) and she is like a sister to me.  she is quirky, sweet, kind, and thoughtful. and always ready to party.  she is seriously such a fun person to be around. she never gets her feelings hurt about dumb things like most girls (including myself) and she is such a good friend.  she was there for me through LOTS of hard times in my life, and good, like when she was the maid of honor in my wedding. :) I am so proud of you Stais, and cannot wait to be your matron of honor in 3 months!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANASTASIA!

kristin