I always enjoy the time I get to spend with my friends. On Sunday, I hung out with two of my best friends, Meredith and Becca.

Since we are out of school for the summer, I don’t get to see them as often as I would like. I was very excited to have the chance to hang out with them.

We had a great day; I went to church with their family and then we ate lunch with their Granny, who made awesome spaghetti.

That afternoon we watched the movie “The Bucket List” with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.

I had seen the movie advertised and couldn’t wait to watch it.

Although I knew the general idea behind the plot, I really wasn’t sure what to expect.

The two men, Edward Cole and Carter Chambers, played by Freeman and Nicholson, both have cancer and are in the hospital receiving chemo treatments.

By chance, they are roommates in the hospital.

After awhile, the two men become friends. They share a common bond in the fact that they both think their lives have gone by too quickly. Soon, they both discover that they each have less than a year to live.

As soon as they receive this sad news, Morgan’s character starts a Bucket List, where he writes down things he had always wanted to do, but had never had the chance to complete.

Nicholson’s character finds the list and adds his own thoughts. Soon they have both put together their list.

The list includes witnessing something truly majestic, helping a complete stranger for a common good, laughing until they cried, driving a Shelby mustang, kissing the most beautiful girl in the world, getting a tattoo, skydiving, seeing the pyramids, seeing Rome and getting back in touch with a daughter.

Despite the fact they both have terminal illnesses, the two men have very different lifestyles. Morgan’s character is a mechanic and a family man whose wife worries about him. Nicholson’s character is a billionaire who is estranged from his daughter.

Once they complete the list, the men begin to travel and try to accomplish everything they had always wanted to do.

Needless to say, by the end of the movie, everything was checked off the list.

I thought the movie was sad, but in a good way, if that makes any sense. This movie is that kind that makes me think. It shows me just how short life is and that I must live it to the fullest.

A few years ago, I made my own Bucket List, although I didn’t have a catchy title. I think I titled it something like “Things I want to Accomplish in my Life.” Watching this movie made me even more determined to accomplish my goals and to just enjoy life.

After we watched the movie, we decided to go outside where we ended up in Granny’s yard picking plums from her trees.

We were armed with our buckets and bags.

Granny is going to show Meredith how to make plum jelly, so we were prepared to pick lots of plums.

Right away we realized that we were not wearing the right kind of shoes for the job. All three of us were wearing our nice shoes.

This meant we had to be very careful and sidestep around the plums already on the ground. I will call it the plum dance. Believe me; we didn’t want plum juice on our favorite shoes.

As we fought with the honeybees and the birds for the plums, we had a great time trying to pick the good fruit and toss the bad.

Soon the wind started blowing and plums started falling from the trees.

We were laughing and trying to dodge the plums.

After awhile, Becca got a ladder so she could start picking fruit from the limbs we couldn’t reach. We filled up several ice cream buckets with plums.

When Becca got tired of standing on the ladder, I went up for awhile. I did okay for the first few minutes; Becca held the ladder and I just handed her the plums I had picked.

All of a sudden my legs started shaking. I was standing pretty much at the top of the ladder. I was afraid I was going to fall, so I got down before I made a big splat with all of the plums.

When we had picked all of the fruit we wanted, we took it back to the house and stored it in the refrigerator.

I had the best time hanging out with my friends. I will be able to look back on that day and remember the “Bucket List,”

plums raining from the trees and the plum dance.