So my best friend from my teenage years and I have been apart for a long while. I mean, really it's only been like 6 years, but we didn't take advantage of how close we were before those 6 years. Then she had her babies and moved to Texas and then to Georgia. Then I had Cara and Gwen and we just did our best to communicate via text or Marco Polo.
Then 2-ish years ago she moved back to Idaho (where her husband's family lives) and we realized we really need to take advantage of only being a few hour drive away!
I first drove up in September (9/16) for her oldest son's birthday. It was just a Saturday-Sunday trip with the older girls and we stayed in a hotel room...I learned the hard way that was a bad idea! I figured it would be easier because I was still pumping for Lucy (which I knew I'd need to dump while I was up there that time), but trying to get the girls to go to sleep when we were all sharing a room was way too difficult and I don't think I'll be doing that again until they are MUCH more used to not being in cribs (it was Gwen's first night out of a crib and we all ended up in the same bed...VERY exhausting). However, it was nice to celebrate her son's birthday, be at the party, and have the girls play with the boys. We also stopped for the zoo and lunch before I drove home (the zoo up in Idaho Falls is tiny, but the kids had fun and I found a Groupon discount for it so it was worth it).
I then went up in November (11/6) just for a Friday through Sunday visit. She has a couple extra rooms so I stayed at her house this time (the girls in one room, me in another), which made it MUCH easier! The girls could nap there and I didn't have to leave early to put them down for bed. We could put the kids down and then hang out, just adults. We mostly played games and talked, but it was so fun! I originally went to help her organize some spaces in her house that needed it (she's always doing crafts for me so I help her organize), but we also made cute shirts for the girls because she found a new fun machine to try out (we made them spaced themed!). We also did some Christmas/Winter Crafts with the kids, which they seemed to like. We even had a girl come babysit the kids for a few hours and we went shopping (the girl was so cute she even dropped off a gift bag full of kid stuff for us). I think I ended up coming home with more than I left with because in cleaning out the areas she made a huge "give away" pile and a lot of the stuff I knew the girls would love.
Most recently, I was up this past weekend just because it had been a little while since my last visit and we knew the rest of the year might be a little iffy. This might have been the most fun trip so far. It was just a Saturday to Monday visit, but we went to the aquarium (where they got to feed/hold LOTS more animals than is possibly at our aquarium), we made fun treats, we went out to lunch and got ice cream, she helped me finish some boxes I had been working on for a few weeks. We had some real parenting moments, we played lot of games (again), walked some shops (the kids got to watch movies in the van and they LOVED it). It was a GREAT trip and I'm SO glad we live closer and our kids can get to know each other and play!
Having a friend that you've known so long and made all sorts of fun plans with as kids be so close you get to do all the fun things you imagined together is SO much fun!
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