This past Saturday, July 18th, 2105, was my 10 year high school reunion. As most of you know, I planned it after I discovered our class president wasn’t going to do it, and it was a lot more work than I expected. To my delight though, it was totally worth it.
I took a 1/2 day on Friday and at noon I left work and headed to Katie’s house to pick her up before heading down to Hood River. Katie helped me SO much with reunion planning stuff and I literally could not have done it without her. She is the best.
When we got to town we stopped by Katie’s hotel so she could check in and then we headed to the British Pub for a Radler in the blazing hot sun (hah). After we chatted with our favorite bartender, confirming our time and drink special with them for our bar crawl the following night, we headed down to Sushi Okalani to put our name in for a table. While we waited we had a drink & some fries upstairs at Celilo. Sarah, Launa and Josh joined us for a drink too!
^^Cracking up at being “gifted” the ugliest butterfly dress by Sarah at Celilo^^
At sushi we entrusted Josh with the ordering and we ended up having a really huge, delicious sushi feast complete with the most amazing Uni Shooters that included Uni, a raw quail egg, Ponzu sauce and a drop of Tabasco. Mmm! I will entrust Josh with my sushi ordering 4eva.
After dinner we all headed back to the British Pub for a nightcap and to wait for Katie’s husband, Josh, to get to town.
The next morning I hung out with Josh and Sara, drank coffee, got a bagel with lox + smoothie, and headed up to my parents’ house to hang with my dad and fluffy before I had to go to the reunion. I sat with my dad and painted my nails and chatted and he got me some burger toppings from the garden while I showered and put on makeup. I also aksed Brother Jim if he would be my date to the reunion (Dustin was in Chicago for a bachelor party of sorts) and he LOLd at me and said no and called me weird. Whatever, brother. A few hours later I headed down to the Hood River Waterfront Park to meet Katie and Josh and get the park shelter ready for the reunion.
Here is what the park shelter looked like before:
And a few pictures with decorations/mid decorating before everyone arrived: 
After everyone arrived we hung out, caught up, looked at pictures, listened to a sweet 2005-throwback Spotify mix complete with songs I asked people to suggest on FB, took pictures with a disposable camera (2005 throwback, amiright? can’t wait for those babies to come back) and played some lawn games (corn hole, giant bananagrams, and Katie made giant yhatzee). We had probably a few over 30 show up which was a few less than we were expecting (based on tickets purchased), but out of 67 in our graduating class I feel like that was a pretty great turn-out!
Kevin from our class brought 2 gas grills to the park shelter and he grilled for us which was so amazing (after some panic over what we were going to eat! Thanks for saving the day with that one, Kevin). We ate hamburgers, black bean burgers, hotdogs, chips, and strawberry shortcake. And because we only charged $15 for tickets, we told people that we wouldn’t be providing alcohol at the BBQ, but that they could bring their own because there is no open container law in Hood River and you can drink in the streets, Vegas style! It’s the best! So most people brought beer and we all drank a few of those which faciliated some extra #sociallubrication. Katie also organized a fun “game” with prizes we played toward the end of the BBQ. She asked questions like “who has the most kids? if you have 1 kid, raise your hand. Keep it up if you have 2…” etc. She did prizes for each category, like a lacy thong for “married the longest,” ear plugs and an eye mask for “traveled the furthest to get to the reunion” and a map for “lives closest to the high school” hahaha. I won “highest degree earned” and I won a notepad with funny sayings on each page (“shit I don’t want to do” for example), and everyone’s bag came with a mini-bottle of alcohol in addition to their prize. It went over really well.
We were at the Waterfront Park from 4-8:30pm hanging out. Around 8 everyone chipped in and helped us pack up things and we all headed to the River City Saloon (including 2 of the 3 teachers we invited), which was the first stop on our post-BBQ bar crawl.
Before the reunion I contacted all the bars and asked if they would be willing to do a drink special for our group. The River City gave us $2 Rainers and Miller Highlifes. At 9:30pm we headed to the British Pub for $5 Rum Punch Special! Mmmm!
I spent most of the time at the Pub bullshitting with Mr. Kasenga which was so fun. I also got a little drunk and un-friended and blocked this girl on FB from our class (who didn’t even graduate with us!!!!!) who had given me a bunch of shit leading up to the reunion “it’s so expensive, are you going to be feeding us on diamond plates?” “Girl, I’m married, of course I’m bringing a date!” “Can I pay you there?” and who posts borderline offensive things like a million times a day. Reminds me of this. It was so satisfying to unfriend and block her IMMEDIATELY after the reunion was over and I had no obligation to ever talk to her again.
Our next stop was supposed to be at a Taco Truck down the street but as we were leaving the Pub I got wind that the taco truck wasn’t open. WHAT?! So, as the group leader, I shouted at everyone that there was a change of plans (good thing I’m loud, right?!) and we headed to the next scheduled bar which was the Trillium. Katie ordered a bunch of fried food for everyone because she is the best and I ordered a round of Jello-shots for the group. #partytimeUSA
At one point at the Trillium one of our classmates fell asleep on the bar. To give him credit, he works the graveyard shift, had been up for like a million hours and has 3 kids. Wow! The bartender told me I had to get him out so we took him outside thinking he’d already called his wife to come get him. A little while later, he was in rough shape and we asked him to unlock his phone so that we could call his wife and see where she was. He couldn’t get it unlocked but a spouse of another classmate saw the shape he was trying to use to unlock the phone, took the phone, figured out the pass code after a few tries, looked at the call log, saw his wife hadn’t been called, called her from his phone and she came to get him. Not before he threw up on the sidewalk though. And then we got him to the street where he continued to throw up. Everyone in our class was so great, they helped hold him up and keep him awake, helped the bartenders clean up the mess and when our classmate’s wife got there we hugged him, got him in the car, gave him a plastic bag just in case and everyone was standing in the street waving bye to them when they drove off. Immediately after they pulled away I shouted, “Jack’s?!” and everyone was like “YES!” (lolz) and we all headed to the next bar. It was actually really nice how supportive and awesome everyone was. Warm fuzzies.
Our next stop was Jack’s which is a sweet Chinese restaurant bar turned dance club after midnight on the weekend. We got Scorpion Bowls for everyone to split and drank those before grabbing one more and heading to the dance floor. We danced HARD for about an hour which was such a blast. Katie also requested Nelly and Ja Rule which everyone in the bar loved.
Right as the lights were about to turn on at Jack’s we ran out and headed back up to the Trillium where they basically told us before we left that they would serve us after hours. 2 classmates got in an argument, I tried to mitigate, we got some beers and hung out before they called last call and we decided that we NEEDED FOOD NOW. A few of us wanted to see if the taco truck was open so we headed down to the food truck pod. The taco truck was still closed (WTF) but a noodle truck was open. Me, Matt, Nick, Kevin, Alex and Katie ate noodles at 3am on the sidewalk. After our noodles we called our rides and were home by 4am. ASK ME HOW I STAYED OUT PARTYING HARD SO LATE?! I HAVE NO IDEA! Ha. It was seriously the most fun night I’ve had in a million years, though.
Katie and I split a cab, I dropped her off at her hotel and headed up to Josh and Sarah’s where I only slept for a few hours (#exhausteddddddd) before getting woken up by cries from the brand new puppy, Kobuk, who they picked up while I was at the reunion on Saturday.
Kiva was NOT happy about her new puppy brother. They’re so cute next to each other though. Big Malamute, tiny Malamute! 
After spending a few hours in the yard with Josh, Sarah, Kiva and the new puppy, Brother Jim came to get me on his motorcycle which was the most terrifying thing ever, even though he promised me we didn’t go over 24MPH and we rode downtown to Bette’s Place for breakfast and so I could meet his new girlfriend who works there. We split a GIANT cinnamon roll (mistake, too much sugar too early), ate eggs and had a great time breakfasting.
Shortly after breakfast I embarked on the longest, sleepiest, traffickest drive back to Seattle. I then met Caroline for a little bit to drop off stuff Alex left in my car and ended up chatting with them both after he showed up at her apartment too. I had to pick up Dustin at the airport at 11 that night so I went home and unpacked for a bit before heading to get him. I was the sleepiest monkey on Monday. UGH!
It was so worth it, though. My reunion was the most fun 12 hours I’ve had in a really long time. I love CHS’s class of 2005! (except the people who live in town and decided not to go, they are dead to me) HA! All the stress of planning for 9 months was totally worth it! CHEERS TO 10 YEARS!
^^Natalie, Erin, me, Des and Brittan sitting in Mill Creek, drinking beers^^
