Flashback Friday--Rochester "kids"

After Jeff and I graduated from college we took our first job up in Rochester, NY. We were a little nervous--never having lived up there before. We kept hearing all about NY city and all of the chaos that is the big city. I think we expected to see people flipping us off and swearing at us all the time. We were pleasantly surprised to find some of the most wonderfully friendly and fun people we've ever met. We instantly fell in love with the area and our church ward was fabulous. I worked with the 16-17 year old girls and there were 16 of them. It seemed that one or two or ten would tag along with us wherever we went. We loved them!!! We'd hop in the car and go to Niagra Falls or we'd go out to Palmyra and visit the Sacred grove or the hill Cumorah. That was one of the cool things about that area. There were so many fun places to visit. We swam in lake Ontario. We'd take them bowling or watch movies at our house. We even had our very own special swimming hole in Letchworth State Park. You had to walk down the creek and climb (or slide) down the waterfalls to get to the little swimming hole. Our jobs were fairly flexible and so we were always able to work out cool little excursions. Unfortunately, Jeff and I had to transfer to Chicago only a year later. We were so sad to leave that place and especially those friends. It has however, been fun to see those "kids" grow up into amazing adults. Even now as we have come into contact with some of them again via technology and such, we celebrate silently with them as good things happen and commiserate with them, sending out electronic happy vibes when we hear that things are not going so well. Both Jeff and I are so incredibly glad that we accepted that first scary job way up north in Rochester, NY.

Here is a flashback picture for all of our "Rochester-kids".

(I know the picture is a little grainy--Sorry!)