lunch break

...rent the runway (again)

...I go out alllllll the time and I'm constantly needing new, awesome outfits.

Right.

But I actually had somewhere to go Saturday night so I decided to try Rent the Runway again. This was a little less formal of an event than last time so I went with...a jumpsuit. Oh yeah, I've made fun of people left and right wearing these. Eating my words, friends. And they taste good.

It's like Christmas morning opening up this box. I tried it on right away. "Those your new jammies?" Charlie asked. (Which is funny, because my jammie wardrobe consists of sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, by that comment you'd think I wore things with lace).

I loved it. Anything that doesn't require spanx basically wins in my book these days.

 

An open back did require some interesting, um, undergarments. But I'll leave it at that. During several group photos, whoever was next to me put their arm around my back and said, "Woah! You have no back on your shirt." Living dangerously, my friends.

My sexy beach wave was brought to you by You Tube. Oh, and my earrings were rentals too.

I have really great friends.

And really incredible co-workers (although I'm not really sure whose leg that is).

 

...three days in chicago

...with my buddy Charlie.

We flew out of the Wilmington, Delaware airport. My parents met us there.

The last time my mom was at this airport was to shake the hand of then Senator John F. Kennedy when he flew in during a campaign stop. It's been awhile.

This was the perfect airport for Charlie's first flight. Quiet, no long lines, and friendly faces.

...the paparazzi followed us out to the plane.

...he was SO excited.

...we were there to visit Carron and kids, and were lucky enough that our days overlapped with some of the days world traveler Kelly Purkey was in town. We met her for brunch where I'm pretty sure the behavior of our children convinced her to, well, never have them.

...We had a full schedule of keep those kids busy.

...A trip to the kid's museum.

...some couch jumping.

...lunch at the Choo Choo restaurant.

...grumpy.

...Charlie's first play, Goodnight Moon.

...He loved it.

...some piano with Ellie.

...iChatting with Clara and Ellie (Clara's sweater was purchased by Daddy. The shoulder bow vaguely reminds me of one of my prom dresses? Ha).

...I was only slightly disappointed that there were no celebrity sightings this trip. Does the oldest McDonald's count?

...There's never enough time with a good friend who lives too far away.

...keeping in touch, long distance

...,pvomg frp, Ba;to,pre

hahahahah. That's how I first typed the first sentence to this post. Think I need a little more sleep?

Starting again...

...Moving from Baltimore was hard, but what was even harder was when Carron moved too. To Chicago.

I have so many good friends. I am lucky. But these days, I am learning that the friends who are most valuable are those who you can go a few days, or even weeks, without hearing from and just spend 10 minutes texting and feel like you are caught up. That you know you are both busy, and exhausted, and probably hungry, and that you care about each other just the same as if you lived five doors away.

When Clara and I were out visiting Carron last month (pre-vomit), the two of us decided to start a group pinterest board for recipes we had made that were so easy a monkey could make them. Because I usually have one monkey or another hanging on me while I'm cooking anyway. The board is here. Carron then started another board for books that we've read and would recommend here. I am not a good reader, in the sense that I get obsessed. Like oh I'll just read five more, wait five hundred more pages. And then I get annoyed. And then I get tired. And then I just have to finish the book. And then it's 3 a.m. I'm trying to teach myself restraint because I really do love to read.

I love keeping up with my friend this way. I love reading her recommendations, her comments. It's not the same as going for Starbucks and pedicures, but I'll take it.

...chi town

...Clara and I spent the weekend in Chicago visiting Carron (who sadly no longer has a blog I can link to) and her family.

In continuing my random-celebrity-airport-sightings, I present you members of the DC United team:

(I did not even realize they were DC United until Carron told me. I just said, "There are some really hot soccer players at baggage claim.") Just now, I went through the entire roster and didn't recognize any of the guys we are pictured with, so I very may well have asked the water boys to come in tight for a snapshot. I'm already embarrassing Clara.

Clara and Ellie, Carron's little girl, are just a few months apart.

Hmm, three guesses at who thought she was older and therefore wiser?

In the meantime, Charlie was back in Maryland "winning" his first-ever trophy. It's already been super-glued once.

By our second day in Chicago, Clara was calling the dog Maddie, the little boy Charlie, and Carron's husband, "Daddy." She is going through this phase where any man is daddy. Which is fine, until tonight when we were out getting ice cream after dinner and a teenage boy walked in to the relatively quiet ice cream shop. "Daddddddy!" she screamed. I guess she's just getting back at me for making her pose with the DC United water boys.

On the day before we left, she started acting a little funny. She hadn't been sleeping so I attributed it to that, until she went all "Linda Blair" (as Carron called it) and decorated Carron's floor, my jeans, and the bathtub with, well, vomit.

Turns out the little babe has a bad double ear infection and is most likely heading to tube surgery like her big brother.

It was a great visit. Too short, of course, and it left me wishing Carron was just a quick walk down the street instead of a plane ride away. There are only a few friends in the world willing to clean up your child's Linda Blaire-esque moments. She's one of them, and that makes her a keeper.

...this, that and oklahoma

...someone got their first bike last weekend.

Watching him take off has been incredible. He literally rode it out of the store.

(And yes, those are the world's biggest training wheels, but we have a tremendously long gravel driveway and that bike can't even think about wobbling).

Today is my 34th birthday. Damn, that is old. It was a day at home for us. A half hour of false fire alarms didn't wake this little girl, but her brother and I finally woke her up to go outside and play. (Her pillow is oh-so-useful).

We had a little Face Time with Ammy (apparently she was simultaneously speaking on her cordless phone from 1995).

Lastly...Oklahoma...

My heart quickened the other night when I got a text asking if I'd seen the news. We lived in Norman, just south of Moore, for the first three years we were married. The people of Oklahoma...they are unbelievably kind. They accept military families as their own, knowing that their time there will be short-lived. They bring you into their communities, their homes, their hearts. I will probably never return to the state, but I will always have a spot for it in my heart (and friendships made there that will last a lifetime).

One of those friends, Laura (or "Nurse Laura" as most of my friends know her) and I had dinner the night after the tornado. She gave me this, heavy-hearted, as an early birthday present, something she had ordered awhile ago. (It's from here if you are interested and they are donating $10 of each Oklahoma print sold to the Red Cross).

Then, just a few minutes ago, one of the other friends I made at my very first job in Oklahoma who called me (and still calls me) her, "Favorite Yankee," donated the gift that moved Team Moustache to $1,500, tripling our fundraising goal.

At its heart, the world is still good.

...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. Hug your mom. Tight.

...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.