Sisterhood

A friend came to visit last week with her son. It was a good week. It got me thinking a lot about my women friends. I have always gotten along great with guys; two of my best guy friends even served as "bridesmen" at our wedding. Guys are great. It's probably just our lack of geographical closeness to each other, but in the last couple of years (well, since becoming a mother), I have found myself closer to girl-friends than guy-friends.

Last week felt like a celebration of that, all week. A few things.

Our whole family went vegetarian for the week, and I never felt that I was lacking anything. Of course, the first thing I did upon arriving home from dropping my friend off at the airport was to fry up some bacon for a breakfast burrito. But for our vegetarian week? No problemo. When the choice is sisterhood or bacon, I choose the former (at least until said sister is on her way home).

I introduced Abe to top-notch stellar television programming like Hannah Montana and Family Matters so that I and my friend could sit and drink our $3.99 bottle of white.

Telling my friend one of the two secrets I've always wanted to mail in to postsecret and then not having her judge me or think I'm weird. Okay, maybe a little weird (there were some raised eyebrows and maybe a giggle), but we were able to joke about it, which is a good sign that her knowing my secret would not be a deterrent from any future visits.

This is not the $3.99 bottle. This is the bottle brought as a gift from Colorado. We drank this the first night. It only went downhill from there.

Conversations like this between me and my son, about Courtney's son.

Introducing my dear one from Colorado to cajun tater tots from The Kennedy School and having her love them as much as I do.

Getting up earlier than usual because of our differing sleep schedules and realizing how nice it is to be already heading back down from Mount Hood by 1pm.

At Mount Hood, where it was snowing in the middle of June. Not just snow on the ground, but actual snow falling from the sky (obviously, it had stopped when we took this pic)

Freaky-deaky scary youtube videos about The Shining and this movie, which I refuse to watch.

Proud Aunt Lori moment: teaching my friend's son to do the "redrum" voice from The Shining.

(seriously, I haven't seen The Shining in probably 25 years)

Dressing our boys up in matching bumblebee costumes, which they found to be hilarious fun.Cute, right? No? Okay, nevermind.

Um, duh: pizza.We got to have Courtney here for Abe's birthday party. Because the weather was nice (for about a day and a half only) and I didn't want to spend time indoors baking home-made from scratch cupcakes like last year, we had a big box of Voo Doo Donuts for the party. Abe loves them. We got to sit in the sun instead of slave in the kitchen.

The donut our son chose for his third birthday donut cake. I mean, of course. Wouldn't you have chosen that one?

On Courtney's last full day in town, I was shocked and thrilled that every one of these ladies was able to get together on short notice, with meeting place unknown until that morning. It was incredible. I had the best time. It was like a mini Oregon Blog Union 2010. A highlight was talking to this lady (the "creepy one without a kid" as she posted on fb, which made me giggle) about What It's All About. They are living it, the dream, the Way. Inspiring.

"The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship."
- William Blake