17 Years and Counting

Last night, I got a text from Jo, one of my friends of 17 years and she asked me when our Christmas party would be.
Backtrack a bit... I had classmates (14 of them) in first grade who have become my lifetime friends. We were all classmates until 6th grade and then we went to different highschools and eventually different colleges -- but despite the distance, we all remained very close friends. Some of them are now working in cities hours away from our hometown but we have our regular get together's and mini informal reunions whenever there is a holiday allowing them to come home.
So Jo texted me and I came to thinking about how excited I am about seeing my friends again. They were the bunch of nuts we were with when we went on that vacation to Boracay hehe. Together we spend hours and hours chit chatting, talking about life, our heartaches, our hopless romantic sentiments. We can spend hours and hours laughing or reminiscing about the past. Together we've seen friends go through pregnancies, baptisms and dedications and a wedding. I say A wedding because I am the only one married among them! Although a couple of us have kids already.
I am so thankful for friends like them. They are a big part of the reason why I say that life still gives me a reason to smile.