Last week I wrote an article about how thankful I am that I'm still friends with my two best friends from high school, even as a senior in college. However, they aren't the only people I've hung on to this long. I still have you guys, my dance friends.

Sydney, Maddie, Christina, Eli, Hannah and Amanda: we started dancing together when we were 10 and 11 — some of us even earlier than that. Not many people can say their friendships have lasted that long, especially considering the fact that we ended up at six different colleges in five different states.

Things haven't always been perfect between us. We've argued (mostly over stupid things), we've had moments of jealousy when someone got a better part in a dance (that somehow seemed a lot more important back then), heck, we even went through puberty together, but our friendship survived all of that which I think almost says more than a friendship free of all conflict.

At the end of the day, we've always been family.

I've been close to all of you in a way different from most of my other friendships. We've laughed together until we couldn't breathe, we've ugly-cried together and we have way more inside jokes than could ever fit on a t-shirt now. We've seen each other at our worst (no one looks good after six hours of dance rehearsal) and we've experienced so many highs together. There were some weeks when I spent more time with you than I did with my family, and I think I might have shed more tears after the last time I shared the stage with you than any other time in my life.

We only manage to get the whole gang together a few times a year now, and I know that number's likely to go down in the next few years, but I trust that we'll still have our dance family.

We've always joked about ending up in the same nursing home together and getting into trouble by racing our wheelchairs down the hall. We're a long way away from that, but I still wouldn't put it past us. (Do you think we'll still remember all the choreography to Jai Ho by then?)

I'm so thankful to have had you in my life for so long. We've all accomplished so much in the 10 years that we've known each other and I can't wait to see where life takes each of you in the next 10 years.

Friends who dance together really do stay together.

Xoxo,

Jules