It's a Kiltie Thing, You Wouldn't Understand

If you're a Kelso High School alumni, you already know what a Kiltie is. For those of you who are all, "Whaa?" about it...

The Kilties were the dance team and color guard for Kelso High School and, aside from that, a wonderful group of girls (and a few guys, depending on the year). As with many dance teams or group activities, we all bonded quickly and grew to be a close knit group of friends and dancers.

These girls are hilarious, and it didn't take long for our practices to be filled with sex talk, bad hair, arguments, and lots of laughs. Here is a team pic from my junior year (14 years ago!):

can you spot an Amelia with blonde hair?

I think that pic was for the yearbook or something, because what we're really like? Is like this:

We went to UDA dance camps together in the summer.

UDA always had a dress up/spirit day, and while some schools planned and schemed and were all matchy matchy, us Kilties? We had other ideas, and decided to just wing it year after year.

gorgeous, aren't we? :)

this is what you get when you "wing it" in the 90's

At camp, one of our favorite things to do was eat. Well, dance too, but all that dancing made us hungry, and UDA had good food! There was a chant that some of us still repeat today, that we got from these camps.

"UDA! UDA! We want food-a! LET'S GO EAT!"

And eat we did.

this is the only food pic I have. NOT a good pic, but this was after a day of dance and we were spent! Notice the diet coke in hand? :)

 This is/was the raunchiest group of girls, EVER. We were constantly telling dirty jokes, making fart noises, telling all the sordid details of our high school romances (those of us that had one). But what takes the cake? We decided to give each other dirty names.

Nothing like Beyotch (because it was just Bitch back then), or Butt Face. Those were WAY too tame. When we Kilties do something, we do it ALL THE WAY, right girls? These new, dirty names actually derived from our given names. We replaced our first and last names with phrases that sounded almost the same. Need an example?

Andrea Bruner = I'll Lay Ya Sooner

Nikki Harding = Sticky Hard On

Marsha Haas = Muffa Hoes

Josie Zbarren = Hosie the Bare One

See what I mean? Dirrrrty :)

This past weekend a group of us Kiltie girls decided to go away for a weekend to Rockaway Beach. We've made a tradition out of getting together once a year for a Kiltie Party, and this was our 4th installment. We rented a little house a couple of blocks away from the beach. Score!

Interwebs, meet the girls!

Left to right: Me, Amanda, Meghan, Nikki, and Andrea

Andrea and I headed down on a Friday night since we had to rent the place for a minimum of two nights. Most of the girls were only available for one night so, when we planned it, the other three girlies were going to come down on Saturday morning and stay through Sunday. Amanda decided to come down on Friday night, too, so Drea and I went to dinner and hung out a little bit while we were waiting for Amanda.

She got there, we hung out, and before we knew it, midnight was upon us and, if any of you know me you'll know that on Friday nights I turn into a pumpkin right around that time. End of the work week, been up since 5:30am, I was a tired girl. Drea and I decided to turn in for the night, and we must have fallen right asleep because we didn't even hear what happened next.

ALL the girls came down that night to surprise us! I guess they got to the house around 12:30am and Drea and I didn't hear a THING. Didn't see their headlights (which shone right in our window), didn't hear them bringing their stuff in, nothing. So, imagine our surprise when Drea gets up at 5am to go sleep on the couch and discovers that there are 2 extra bodies in the house now! Such an awesome surprise and I'm SO glad they decided to come down early!

The next morning we made breakfast at the beach house (french toast, eggs, bacon), took our time getting ready and visiting, and then set out to explore the tiny town of Rockaway Beach, Oregon. We didn't know it at the time, but there was a kite festival going on!

We walked out onto the sand to take some pics.

Meghan decided to go IN the water...

Wet pants and all, Meghan is the dare devil of our group, never afraid to be the first to do something crazy.

Then we decided it was time for another group photo, and we figured we'd pose in front of the Rockaway Beach sign. After several failed attempts to take our own picture, a kind man (we'll call him Mr. Dude) and his wife offered to take one for us.

Failed attempt:

Thanks to Mr. Dude, some good ones:

And then, in Kiltie style, we had to get a shot of the "goods" too:

This is where Mr. Dude claimed he needed to grab a wide angle lense. His wife smacked him for us :)

We went shopping, ducking into some super cute antique stores. There were food carts all over, so we got some grub which included the infamous elephant ears... Mmm....

Meghan and Andrea taking a break from shopping

Meghan decided she wanted to kiss a fish:

And along the way I found some burried treasure:

After we were done at the beach, we decided to head home and cook some dinner on the BBQ. On the menu? BBQ'd chicken, german potato salad, cucumber and tomato salad, bread and spinach dip, and baked beans. Dessert included some chocolate peanut butter brownies I baked, but they were just meh. Here's what our table looked like!

It was so much fun, having all us girls in the kitchen together, listening to music and talking about anything and everything. We made some margaritas, drank some wine, took a tequila shot, and decided to head for the hot tub.

After making our way to the hot tub in the dark, led only by a childs flashlight and a candle, we got the top off and climbed in, spilling water EVERYWHERE! We came to the conclusion that this hot tub was intended for no more than 3 people, but did we care? No! After hanging out for a while, a few mishaps with getting the top back on (that's what she said), and not having a camera to document it all, we made it back into the house to warm up and drink some more. And take more group pictures!

I don't even remember what time we went to bed, but it was well after 2am and it didn't even matter. We had so much fun staying up talking about husbands/boyfriends, kids, hair, sex, you name it, and I can't believe we STILL only do this once a year.

The next morning we all got up and had to be out of the house by 11am, so the cleaning people could come. On very little sleep we all got up, cleaned up the house and ourselves, packed, and were on our way to the Cow Belle Cafe in downtown Rockaway by 10:30am.

We took some pictures and ate some yummy food:

Miss Amanda

Yours Truly

Meghan

Drea and Nikki

After here, we all headed our separate ways. Drea and I went down to the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we tried Squeaky Cheese (what's the big deal?), a smoky cheddar, and ended up buying a Garlic White Cheddar mini loaf. But THAT'S not why you go to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Everyone knows you go there for their ICE CREAM! Here we are, in all of our glory:

I don't know about the rest of the girls, but this weekend was not long enough as far as I'm concerned. It passed by so quickly, and I wasn't ready to go back home to responsibility and reality. With a weekend full of good friends, good food, drinks, laughter, and reminiscing, I am able to reflect back on this weekend and find myself thankful. Thankful that these girls are in my life, thankful that we've all stayed in contact over the years (I've known Nikki for over 20 years!), and thankful that we all took the initiative to make this weekend happen, and to create memories we'll be talking about for years to come.

Love you girls!