lunch break

...weekend

...thank you for your kind comments about Charmer. I always knew she was more than our dog, your comments always confirm that.

---

The last of my college friends was married on Friday afternoon. I traveled up to Philly to celebrate with some of my closest friends and couldn't quite grasp that it's been almost 16 years since we first met.

There are lots of babies, babies to come, babies babies babies. We ended the night early, our ears ringing from the band.

The next morning I woke up and met my mom at Terrain.

Ever walk in somewhere and feel so overwhelmed because you want one of everything?

Yeah, that feeling.

On the way home, I drove by my first place of employment. For those of you have heard me tell the story about how I worked at the very first Rita's water ice, here she is:

(I was stopped, don't worry). For some reason, there is no plaque commemorating my employment. Hmph.

On Sunday, we drove back up to Pennsylvania as a family to celebrate my baby cousin, Devin, graduating from college. It is hard to type those words. The day she was born is one of my first vivid memories.

And we celebrated the fact that the three of us could be together.

...catching up

...friendship is an amazing thing. I have lost track of the comments here, the e-mails in my inbox, the texts on my phone, the notes in my mailbox that have made me realize how lucky I am when it comes to you.

Thank you.

--

I've been so absent over the last few months. Here and in person, I'm sure. There are so many things that just literally happened, big or small, that I never even bothered to talk about.

Clara and I went to Chicago to visit Carron. I flew on a plane with a child by myself! I know, I know, this is nothing to those of you who are much better mothers than me.

Ken and I went to Seattle for work.

I haven't been there in four years, when I went there with the Fontwerks group back before a lot of things. That was then:

This is now (it felt like a serious accomplishment when I found these chairs again):

Ken and I went to the Dave Matthews Band concert in Baltimore.

The last concert I went to was back in 2006, you know, when I was young. The concert was good, but I spent some percentage of my time being annoyed at these people:

I do not understand why people stand up at concerts. I didn't pay a lot of money to see you sway to the beat and make out. Thanks. The best part, by far, was The Lumineers opening for DMB. For some reason, the people in front of us restrained from the swaying/making out during that. The second best part was Ken coming back from the bathroom and telling me about some "kid smoking dope" in the stall next to him.

We finally got a proper shot of the kids with their aunties:

My friends from college and awholelottakids three and under came to visit:

Hm. This shot is probably a little more realistic:

Carron and kiddos came to visit. There was a large amount of bribery involved in this and not one child is even smiling. Should take back the bribes:

And then this morning, we woke up, and it had snowed. And if this picture doesn't make you laugh, well, then I have no hope for you:

...it's a party

My mom has not been well. It's been hard to muster the holiday spirit over the last few weeks. To feel merry without feeling phony. But I have two kids, one who is totally enamored with the guy with the white beard and all he encompasses and the other who calls him dada and screams.

Ken tries not to take it personally.

We also have a lot of new friends, who we wanted to meet each other. And we have old friends we wanted to have out to our new house.

So we decided to throw a party. Well, I should say I decided to throw a party and Ken was like, "OK," and then was forced to act as the personal assistant for a very demanding boss (me) the week before. I didn't see him roll his eyes once. What a guy.

(Idea for the easiest Christmas craft ever from poppytalk)

There were friends we have known for 15 years, friends from our time in Oklahoma, friends from Baltimore, and our newest friends, all together. Everyone has children age three and under, and there were three pregnant ladies, so there was lots of talk of labor, epidurals, and potty training. You just can't get away from it. It's where we are now. Fast forward 15 years and I imagine it will be talk of tuition and the inevitable empty nest. I just hope it's the same group of friends.

And these two little peanuts had quite the evening with their godmothers.

...reunited

...I had my fifteen-year high school reunion last weekend. There were 43 people in my high school class, which I think means barring any drastic weight loss, gain, or dramatic plastic surgery, we can see each other every five years and feel like not much has changed.

I got ready in my mom's hospital room (she is home now). Nothing like flourescent hospital lights to bring out the wrinkles that you have no makeup to hide.

It was a wonderful night, concluded with a reading of our senior superlatives from the yearbook (I love the coffee table...beer bottles mixed with a shape sorter? Can you tell we are all in the midst of toddler craziness? It's a new drinking game! Beer and shape sorting! Kinda like quarters?):

It's safe to say that I like the people I went to high school with more today than I did fifteen years ago. I've been thinking about it a lot over the last few days, and in Brad Paisley style, I wrote a letter to 18 year-old me. What can I say? I should have been a country music songwriter.

--

At your fifteen-year reunion, there are lawyers, therapists, and a lot of people who could do your taxes. There’s an emergency room doctor, writers, a producer.

You all dress better than you did fifteen years ago – but that isn’t hard considering you graduated in the era of flannel shirts and overalls and before flat irons.

You will lose touch with almost all of your 43 classmates, but through something you’ll wish you invented called social media, you will reconnect with almost every single one of them.

There are lots of moms, and lots of dads. So many babies, so many born within days of each other one summer fourteen years after you graduated. Your prom date, Joe, had a son seven days before your daughter was born.

You no longer think Phish is all that great, but Dave Matthews is a big part of your iTunes library. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out what iTunes is soon enough. Buy Apple stock.

You will understand very few of the inside jokes on your own yearbook page or messages written to you from your friends fifteen years from now.  You will not remember why you harbored resentment or held a grudge toward one person or another.

You will not marry a Sallies guy, as your senior page predicted, but you’ll marry a good guy. A wonderful guy. You will bring two lives into this world, fast and furiously.

At your reunion, you will laugh until you cry thinking about how stupid, naïve, young you really were.

E-mail is not a flash in the pan.

None of your “dreams” came true, but dreams you didn’t even realize you had have come true.

You will know sadness you can’t imagine right now, but you’ll also feel happiness you didn’t even know existed.

...friendships

...over the last few weeks, I've been reminded of how many good friendships I have in my life.

I am lucky that my mom taught me how important friendships are.

I have friends who I have known forever. One sent me a gift card to Terrain last week with the message: "Just because. Send a pic of the fabulous thing I picked our for you. ;) I know how much time, energy and love you put into caring for your family. Take a little time to care for yourself...even if it is just to go through online Terrain at midnight." (A good friend is someone who knows your favorite store).

I have friends who I've never met. That's weird, I know. But through scrapbooking I have so many friends I've never met, probably will never meet, but will always consider them friends. One sent me this poem:

hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune--without the words,
and never stops at all,

and sweetest in the gale is heard;
and sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird
that kept so many warm.

i've heard it in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet, never, in extremity,
it asked a crumb of me.
(emily dickinson)

And I have friends who I've known for years and just met, like this lady. When we sat down to eat, the waitress asked us if we were a birthday party. Ha. No, just me, Charlie, Stephanie and Jimmy, and their 8,000 kids.

We began our friendship about five years ago talking about the Bachelor. And quickly bonded over growing up tall, awkward, and without flat irons. And now we live on the same coast. We might start a support group for those who grew up tall, awkward, and without flat irons.

...moving on

...thank you. I don't know what else to say. I expected some response, but never that kind of response. You just go about your life doing your thing and then something like that last post happens and it makes you realize people really are listening and paying attention. It's humbling, really.

---

I spent last weekend with six girlfriends who knew me when I scrapbooked like this:

And yes, I'm the one wearing a leather top AND leather pants. Classay. I'm pretty sure my top didn't have a back either. OK, I'll admit it, they were pleather. Classay just got classier.

We didn't wear nearly as much leather or our boas this year, and we drank more sangria than beer. We have jobs and babies (even a set of twins!) and husbands and mortgages. We have memories of Greek Week and Senior Week and some classes and studying in between. And we have each other. They are the kind of friends who you could not see for years and yet when you get together you are back on the stage of Greek Week 2000. Just a little less flexible and a lot more sober.

...New Year's Eve 2011

...I woke up on New Year's Day groggy, dehydrated, and had a rockin' headache. Sounds like we had a pretty wild night, right?

Right.

You see, at 1:36 a.m. on December 31, I received a text from Molly Marine, "At the hospital. :)" It was time for baby Molly Marine!

We waited all day for news. We worried as the day got later and later. Meckenzie and I texted all day, wondering when the baby, who we decided should be named after us (naturally), would finally arrive.

At 5:00 p.m. I broke down and texted Molly's sister, and she continued to text me over the next few hours with updates, which I then texted to Meckenzie.

Then things started to get a little loopy.

My real question is: what did people DO before texting and Facebook when they went into labor? Did they just go to the hospital and people found out a few days later they'd given birth? Via carrier pigeon? A handwritten letter, perhaps?

At 12:24 a.m. on January 1, fireworks were going off outside and I was sitting in bed waiting for the next text. At 1:48 a.m. it came, "Baby born! Healthy!! No name yet!!!" I sighed, rolled over, and fell fast asleep (for the next few minutes until Clara was up to eat). Even Ken got in on the action, asking me as I turned the light off, "That baby born yet?"

I always knew Molly was a trooper. You don't survive deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq without having a little bit of tough in your DNA. But 24+ hours of labor? That takes her to a whole other level of trooper in my mind.

Can't wait to meet the little Molly Marine, who does have a name now - Elizabeth. Perfect little Lizzie, born to two Marine Captains on 1/1 at 1:11 a.m.