Anna Banana

A fellow blogger, who's blog I love and adore, wrote a post the other day all about a very dear friend of hers. It inspired me to make a similar entry of my own.

I am proud and honored to introduce to you my very own BFF, Anna. Also known as Anrazel in the blogworld. Also known as Anna Banana, or just Banana, or simply Anna is fine too.

Isn't she cute? I think so.


Anna and I met when we were freshman in highschool. We played on the freshman soccer team together and after becoming friends, she joined my church soccer team as well. We actually had alot more fun on that team as it wasn't as competitive as our highschool team and we could goof off alot more. I remember we would walk onto the field (on our church team) smoking our cigarettes and getting dirty looks from some of the parents. We really didn't give a shit though. Cuz we were such badasses.

For anyone thinking ... "what? church? Laura at church?" Well, yes although I am no longer practicing, I was raised by my parents in the catholic religion.

So anyway.... we had alot of fun in highschool together. Our drink of choice was shots of Jack Daniel's chased with Bud Light. Wow that sounds so gross now... but at the time it did the job. All we needed was a 5th of Jack and a 6 pack of bud between the 2 of us and we were set for the night. I also remember one night when we sat in my room in the basement at my parents house and played war (the card game). Each round we lost we had to do a shot of Seagram's 7. After the game was over we could barely function and yet somehow we crawled out of the basement window and laid in my driveway looking up at the stars and chatting girl talk till the sun came up.

I think the worst drinking story I had was when I drank an entire pint of everclear. Anna and I were with a couple of her "work friends" (she worked at Hardee's) and her boyfriend at the time. I had never drank everclear before and we were playing quarters. I drank it so fast I had no idea the effect it was going to have on me. Lets just say I haven't touched that stuff since (well unless maybe it was in Jungle Juice:). At some point I flew headfirst into a pay phone and had a huge bump on my forehead for days, I dropped some girls head into a toilet, I passed out in the backseat of Anna's car for a few hours, and I left a trail of puke up the steps at Anna's parent's house (Sorry Anna... I still feel bad you had to clean up those stairs). But she never ever complained. And thankfully, with her help, I managed to survive the night.

Yes, we drank way too much for just being in highschool. But maybe it's a good thing that we got it all out of our systems early. Neither of us are big drinkers now, although we do still enjoy it in a much more casual way.


This may explain my fear of my karma though... what I did to my parents...

Somehow we made it through high school and graduated on time. Here's a picture of Anna at our Highschool All-Knighter right after graduation (our mascot was a Knight). Check out the pager in her pocket!

After high school we went on to college together at Missouri Valley. Ofcourse, we were room mates. It was so much fun rooming together. We even adopted a kitty we rescued from the local shelter and named him George. He tried taking his life and jumping out of the car window on our way home from the shelter with him. Luckily I reached my arm out just in time to grab him about a foot outside of our window (he later ended up living with Anna's parents and was a great cat).

Here's Anna and George taking a nap.


Our first attempt at having a pet was a local wild cat that we kidnapped from it's mother living underneath an old house down the street from our school. It was risky business... and probably not the best idea to mess with wild cats. She was not happy at all when we took her from her mom, brought her home and gave her a flee dip. Some of the other students living in the dorm were not happy at all with us when we spent an entire evening listening to the momma cat screaming and crying outside of our window 3 stories below. I can't believe she found us... to this day it still amazes me. And ofcourse we had to return the kitty to her mom. After that we rescued George.

I only lasted at MoValley one semester. I came back home to continue my education there and Anna stayed at MoValley and graduated. Although our lives were very busy and we didn't get to see each other as often as we would have liked, I would visit MoValley here and there and whenever Anna would come home we would try to hang out.

Here we are together for halloween one year. She was a grateful dead bear and I was a fairy. See my pointed ears? I also had wings.


Here we are on a girls camping trip.


The first and only time I ever took Daisy camping. It was such a miserable experience we haven't taken her again. Anna, Daisy and I took a hike around the lake where we were camping and about half way through we realized that we had hundreds and hundreds of seed tics all over us. We started picking them off of each other and realized most of them were all over Daisy. I picked her up and we started running back to camp, flicking tics off of us and screaming the whole way. I couldn't tell you how long we sat picking those little f$%&ers off of each other and from Daisy after we returned.

And here's another random Halloween picture taken a few years later.



A couple years ago was our 10 year high school reunion. Here we are with the rest of the members of our high school reunion committee at a washers tournament we put on to try to raise money for our reunion. There's me and Anna in the middle and another very good friend of mine, Toni, in my lap.


Here's a picture of Joe pinching Anna's cheek. Joe gets along with almost all of my friends, and most other people in general actually, but I have a friend or two he wouldn't mind not seeing very often. I am so grateful that Joe and Anna get along so well. He just adores her.


Anna got married a little over a year before I did. For her bachelorette party we went on a little road trip and stayed in a little town not far from us with great wineries and bars. About 10 girls went on the trip and shacked up in a hotel. We spent the day visiting wineries and the night was spent at the local bars. It was alot of fun and Anna made the most adorable bachelorette.

Here we are giving each other a smooch.. sorry boys, no tongue and this was strictly platonic. Although Toni seems alittle shocked there in the background.


About a year after her wedding Anna found out she was pregnant! Ofcourse that didn't stop her from driving me around and keeping track of me all night at my own bachelorette party. Here we are at the beginning of the night. I still look all nice and sober.



Here we are towards the end of the night.. she still looks the same, I am starting to look a little worn out. I was a dancing machine. I even had a "dance-off" with some random guy at the bar. It was straight out of a scene in a movie!


Anna was 5 months pregnant in my wedding. Here she is getting her hair done and all ready for the ceremony.

It was really neat having her and BBZ in her belly standing up in my wedding as my maid of honor.


Here we are a couple of months after my wedding at another friend's wedding. Anna is still very pregnant and I am actually pregnant too.. although I don't find out for a few days later (I also had a miscarriage).



Anna's baby was born in September 2008. Here I am holding him the first week after he was born.


He has changed and grown so much in the past year. I can't believe he's already about to have his 1 year birthday!! Anna is also an amazing mother, ofcourse I knew she would be. I feel fortunate having her become a mother right before me so I can go to her for advice as I am about to embark on this adventure myself. We have alot of similar views and ideas on parenting and it is nice to have such a close friend who breastfeeds as well.

I also feel very lucky just to have such a great friend in my life. I can talk to Anna about everything and can always rely on her to be there when I need her.

Love you Anna!

So there you have it and there you are. It was really hard to keep things under control, as I have hundreds more stories and pictures of our adventures together. This will have to do for now.


I hope you enjoyed meeting Anna and now I challenge all of you to post your own entry all about a good friends of yours!