Dear Hometown Friends,

I guess I should start off by simply saying thank you. Thank you so much for making this summer the greatest one yet. I will always cherish the memories that we have made over the last couple of months. Whether they're from the lake, spontaneous road trips, having kickbacks in the garage, creating makeshift slip n’ slides, watching summer sunsets, or even watching "The Bachelorette"while we stuff our faces with food that we know we’ll regret eating, they all have a very special place in my heart.

To be completely honest, I was worried about this summer. In the past, we all saw each other every single day at school. We all played sports with each other or were involved in the same clubs. We would always sit with each other at lunch or go on Sonic happy hour runs immediately after school got out. But that's all in the past. Now we have all just finished our first year of college, which is great. However, going into this summer, I was afraid that things wouldn’t be the same as they were before we parted ways. We’ve all grown a lot, we’ve all made so many new friends, and we’ve all changed a little bit as people because of that. I was expecting that this summer would consist of awkward attempts to rekindle our old friendships that had weakened in the nine months that we were off at school.

Turns out that I was worried about nothing. To my surprise, it was almost as if we had never moved away from each other at all. It was incredibly easy for us to resume our friendship and pick up exactly where we had left off as if we had never even left each other. I never believed that the power of friendship was so strong until now.

Now here comes the tough part.

This could could have potentially been the last full summer we all spend together. Now that we are even further into our college careers, many of us will begin to receive summer internship opportunities or enroll in summer classes, while only a few others will choose to spend another summer at home. Although we'll be divided even more, I’m sure we’ll all be able to meet up from time to time. Unfortunately, I still can’t imagine it being like the old times when we were with each other almost every single day. Since this summer exceeded my expectations, however, I’m going to have faith in our friendship and hope that next summer is just as great. The power of such a close friendship is truly incredible.

So once again, thank you for making this summer the best one yet. It was lit.

Love you all,

Grant