wordless wednesday

[::melts::]

the grand canyon of friendship

This weekend was as emotional as it was fun. It's hard for me to see (and admit!) that my little sister is growing up but I am so proud of her at the same time. We had a huge party, as typical for our family, yesterday for her and to celebrate my other sister's wedding.

It was so nice to see our family and friends all in one place. and we had a gorgeous day for it. I promise to post some more pictures of this soon.

The real emotion I want to talk about is one that I was not at all expecting to feel this weekend. It's one that I am not sure what to call it. Maybe distant would be a good place to start.

Some of my best friends in the world are also my oldest friends. I consider myself incredibly blessed to have them in my life. We are all in completly different places in our lives [married w/ child, recently married, soon to be married & single mom], we have been for some time now and it hasn't made much of a difference (at least not to me?) until recently.

I fully believe that you surround yourself in life with people you relate the best to, whether you realize it or not, it happens. It doesn't mean you are shutting anyone else out, it just means you have more in common with someone else for the moment.

When I got engaged and married, my husband and I tended to spend time with our other [soon-to-be] married friends but we still partied hard with our usual group and were always entertaining. We valued our alone time as much as our together time. My closest friends were not married - one of them actually had a little girl who we loved to spend time with - but we spent lots of time together sans husband and I felt like we were still really close.

When I got pregnant, I got tired. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything except sleep. But, I did my best to get out of the house and spend time with friends b/c I knew soon I would have a little one in tow. I am sure I didn't do a very good job at this, but I also needed to spend time with my husband as it would never again be just the two of us, so I did my best. I also had a few close friends that were pregnant, so we tended to sit on the couch together! This is probably when the distance started that I never really noticed, I chalked it up to life.

Now that this awesome little person is here, I want to spend time with my friends who have equally awesome little ones, because I relate to them more and I really enjoy spending time wiht other moms. I want to spend time with my family and other families because I feel comfortable doing that and so does my husband. Don't get me wrong, I still want to spend time with the nearest and dearest, but I understand that not everyone wants to hang out with me and an 8week old. [Here is where the big gap comes in that I just fell into yesterday] I am no longer in a place in my life where I want to go out and drink with friends to get wasted -iinstead I want to have a cook out, have a few beers on the patio while my baby plays in the grass and hang out. Once in a while a night out with the girls is clearly in order, but I haven't had that opportunity yet.

I have said it before, I am now the un-fun friend. But I am at peace with this. I don't have the time, the money or the energy to go out of town on the weekends, to be out past 10pm because I have to be up by 6am, to be away from my family all day when it is rare that the 3 of us are in the same room awake. So call me lame, call me a bad friend for not dropping my new life to go have a beer with you, but i'll call myself a new mom, a wife and your friend who is working it all out with this little peanut in the mix......

hopefully you'll stick around friends, because we'll miss you if this gap gets any wider.

18 years in the making

And my LITTLE sister is GRADUATING from High School.

I am amazed. Not that she is graduating, but that she is OLD enough to graduate. (don't ask me how I will feel when she graduates from college or gets married!)

We are 6 years apart in age, but we couldn't be closer.

My little sister who was the 2 year old with the blondest, curly hair & the bunny blanket, the 6 year old who was sure she was 16, the 13 year old who was forced to act much older, the 16 year old who I taught to drive - is now the 18 year old who is an amazing young women that I trust with my daughter's life on a daily basis.

Miss Kristina is a perfect example of someone who can look at life's trials and tribulations
(and we as a family have faced many of these) and still see the sun shining on the other side. I hope she can show this to my daughter and I know that she has taught me a thing or two about letting God take over in the hardest and best of times.

Never stop asking "what if" my little sister, because the answers you come up with and discover are only going to get bigger and better.

I love you. We love you. And we are very proud of you.

Wordless Wednesday

[hoping we get our very own sooner than later...]

Real Life

I feel like tomorrow is my first baby step back into my "real life".
I am working, at the office, tomorrow afternoon and Wed. morning.
It should be interesting, in many ways.

For pretty much my entire life I have said I could never be a stay at home mom. And for the most part, I feel the same exact way today. I adore my daughter, spending time with her is my favorite thing to do. But I crave interaction, purpose & fulfilment that her little self and doing the dishes can't give me. Absolutly I will miss her, but I will be that much more excited to spend time with her.

There is a deep down need inside of me to work. I have done it since I was 15 and never stopped to look back or think twice. I worked through college while taking 25 credit hours, I worked through medical school, I will work through graduate school and through the beginning of my child's life. I hope, one day, I am successful enough at what I do to be able to work part time, but to be perfectly honest - I don't see that happening in the near or distant future. I enjoy what I do, for the most part who I work with, and I especially enjoy the feeling of providing for my family and myself.

Don't get me wrong, staying at home with your kids is no less of a job, no less fulfilling, no less purposeful and certainly not less work. But for me, something is missing and I will be glad to be at work no matter how much I bitch about it.
And, considering the way the economy is currently, I am thankful to have any job, let alone one that I like, am good at and appreciated for. There is not a day that goes by that I take that for granted.

So, tomorrow is the first baby step, it will be fine.
I am actually pretty anxious to get a new schedule down (work/workout/baby/husband and soon school... it will all fit in somehow!)