Dedicated Babes

Long, long ago, on a distant fourth of July, eight overly-dramatic teenage girls spent the day together. Some were already close friends in various groupings, but they had never been together like this, although they all knew one another from school or church.

They followed the big Freedom Festival parade in Provo, not standing in one spot and fighting the enormous crowds, but rather walking the route against the parade. They spent the time chatting, laughing, and being all-out silly, and ended at one of the girls' homes near the end of the route.

Deciding that they were very, very, hungry, they piled into a van and headed out to a local restaurant, not realizing that fighting parade traffic is worse than facing BYU game traffic. A couple of miles and about two hours later, they finally arrived at Training Table and stuffed their faces while bonding over cheese fries.

And thus "The Babes" were born.

I can literally attribute much of who I am today to the years I spent with the Babes. We've gone through enough drama to fill up a year's worth of Soap-Opera Sundays and not finish, but through it all we've remained friends.

That original lunch was (dare I do the math?) more than sixteen years ago. While we're somewhat spread out now and don't get together very often, we keep in contact on some level throughout the year. We rarely get together in a group; usually it's two or three of us at a time.

But today was special, so I tried to get as many together as possible. Why? I wanted to honor their long-time influence in my life. Part of that came because of all the fun we had seeing movies together, including Much Ado about Nothing, which, if you've paid any attention here at all, you know that Spires of Stone is based on.

So if you open up the front of Spires, you'll see that it's dedicated to, yep, The Babes.

Those that were able to make it came to my house for lunch today, and they each got their own copy of the book. Of course, three of us are missing from the picture (okay, fine, two of them live a couple of states away; I guess they can be excused), but getting five out of eight together isn't too bad.

Em, I made your brownies for dessert in honor of your absence. Granted, I know you couldn't eat them had you been here, but we thought of you. And yes, they were delicious.