Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi All!
Happy Thanksgiving eve!
Tomorrow, K and I will be dancing/teaching together to a roomful of our clients and staff and I can't wait. We do it every year!
And, it always reminds me of the 'first Thanksgiving' AKA the first year Karen and I became friends...
It was 1994 and we met in Newton when she was subbing a class there and I was taking class there. We became fast friends and were at the Bertucci's in Newton one night after class. We were eating and chatting and wishing that, one day, we'd have our own Center. The Owner of that Center at the time was a real...pip. No one talked to each other before class, they just sat on their mats and read magazines, she never came out of the office until she was ready to get onstage (thereby never greeting her customers) and it was just a clicky, ridiculous atmosphere-though lots of the ladies were super nice! (There's a new owner now WHO ROCKS!)
Anyway...
The day after Thanksgiving was the first day I ever went to Karen's house to visit (I lived in Boston at the time...) and when I saw Mista from the back I thought it was her Dad!!! HAHA.
We had a fun day and lots of laughs like we always do...
And that was really the first day of our true friendship. So this time of year always reminds me...
Thereafter, she convinced me to move up here (North of Boston) and she trained me every day (towards my instructorhood) and we hung out, drank some mudslides, laughed, cooked and made Mista's life hell in general! (I had no Mista of my own back then...)
We started our classes in a Church hall that pre-dates the original Thanksgiving, I think...and moved onto a dance studio when Karen got pregnant with Kayla and we needed A/C. We still have many of the folks who danced with us back then still dancing with us now.
I put my eye on our current space (for our Center location) early on and never took my eye off it. The building was a mess, the parking lot dirt...but I had a feeling. (It had been a J Center over a decade before that)
So in early 1997 we made our move...our own Center. We moved in June 1, 1997 and had our first Thanksgiving class here (we had had 2 already in other locations) that year.
Hard to believe it's been THAT long...
We were the first to run a Thanksgiving day class and now everyone in our area does it. We also give away ONE apple pie...just one, even though they'll be, oh, 50-75 people in class. It's fun to have that one pie to give away.
Well, it's time for me to get ready for tonight's classes. We have our set all set for tomorrow-Shaking a Tail Feather for sure...
But, here's to my bestie. We've had good times and hard times...but we've done it all together. A few years ago I wasn't sure our friendship would make it...but we did. And I couldn't be more thankful!