Quick Weekend Trip to Utah

Who says January is boring? *pfft* Mine certainly wasn't! I had a wonderful month!

Mom's Birthday Bash:
I flew to Utah the weekend of January 17th for my mom's 60th birthday. (All by myself! No kids. no Jason. Just me. Yeah, I know!) We had a pretty good turnout. She got to see friends she went to high school with, who she hasn't seen in almost 40 years! The party was a lot of fun and I think mom really enjoyed it. I was glad we could do that for her. She's usually the one planning the parties, it's about time we had one in her honor. I love you mom!

Surprise!!!
The next day they threw me a surprise birthday party at Jennie's house! It has been about 11 years since I got to celebrate my birthday with my family! We just don't get to Utah in January very often. It was so nice. They laid out a big piece of paper and had everyone write little notes to me. SO SWEET! They made me a cake with ladybugs on it and sang to me *awe* made me feel so special!

Last Night:
On the last night of my trip I stayed at my baby sister's house. We laughed, talked, bathed baby Boston, and stayed up until 3 a.m. making Thank You cards for my mom to send to her guests. The perfect ending to my care-free weekend.

(I stole my sister's picture collage because I don't have time or energy to make my own right now - besides most of the pictures are from my camera anyway *ha*)
I have more January memories to share, but I'm tired and I don't want to format pictures right now. So I'm going to bed.

Make New Friends But Keep the Old...

...some are silver while the other gold.

Last Wednesday night we helped our friends pack up their moving van and said goodbye *cries* they left us for Utah the next morning. They have been talking about it and planning it for a long time and it finally came...and now they are GONE!

We have been close like family since 2001! Before any of us had kids. Our kids have been friends since before they could walk. Aimee and Betty are the closest Jenalyn has to sisters and I know she loves them as if they were her sisters.

We've been a lot of places and have done a lot of things together. When we got back from helping them pack Wednesday night I stayed up [way too late] going thru old pictures so I thought I would share some.

This is the oldest picture I could find - taken on Jenalyn's first birthday in the zoo parking lot:
Here is a collage of other pictures of the girls together throughout the past 5 years:
And the most recent, taken New Year's Eve (these girls really know how to rock!):
Here is a small, condensed list of what we've done/been thru together:

• Countless game nights: Settlers of Catan and Papa John's Pizza (including some really intense games that I thought might end our friendship *LOL*).
• Numerous other games (i.e. Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit; Apples to Apples; Guild Wars; Munchkin *blegh*, etc.)
  
• We've had 7 New Years celebrations.
• Gone thru 5 pregnancies (combined).
• Moved 8 times (combined).
• Gone on 2 vacations together (Utah and Colorado).
  
• Countless shared dinners (sometimes 2-3 times a week).
• About 5 sleep-over parties (including a back-yard campout).
• A couple of trips to the zoo.
• Several birthday celebrations (Heidi and I have made quite a few birthday cakes together!)
• Several scrapbooking outings.

This list certainly doesn't cover everything. We've also enjoyed trips to the pumpkin patch, the County Fair, Halloween parties/trick-or-treating, parks, swimming pools, Sunday scones...just to name a few...

*sigh* I miss them already!

The good news here is I know we will stay in touch. With the technology we have, and as close as our families are, I have no doubt they will be in our lives forever! After all, they did move to UTAH - hello...we go to Utah at least once a year! They can't get rid of us that easily!

So here's to good, lasting friendships! I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Temorarily lost my will to blog.

I've had a hard time finding motivation to blog lately! No Christmas or New Year blog inspiration...probably because I have a million pictures to go thru and just thinking of it overwhelms me! ...so I'll skip that for now.

As I was getting ready to climb into bed tonight I found my motivation! *ugh* I'm so tired after working a full day today, and I have to be to work at 7:30 in the morning, but I don't want to lose my drive! So here I sit in my out-dated prescription glasses and my fuzzy pink slippers at midnight...blogging!

I had a thought...er, a memory from last night. We had our good friends over for dinner. While we were sitting down to eat the girls were talking. Betty said, "When I grow up I'm going to be my mom's mom!" Aimee then corrected her and said, "NO, when you grow up you'll have your own kids!" Then Jenalyn popped in and said, "When I grow up I'm gonna be my mom's friend."

******awe******

I didn't think about that much when she said it last night because so much was going on, but when I thought of it tonight I got all mushy-gushy. I have always hoped she would want to be my friend. I've hoped we'd always be close, that when she's a teenager we'll have late-night chats like I did with my mom. So to hear her say that she wants to be my friend when she grows up. *sigh* I'm speechless!

We got a hand-me-down bed net from some friends (their daughter grew out of the princessy-frilly fluff) and we finally hung it over Jenalyn's bed last weekend. She LOVES it. Heck, I love it! It's so pretty! So I took a bunch of pictures of her in her fun bed that night (Corbin popped in for a couple). The next morning she kept saying, "Mom, we should take a picture with me and you in my pretty bed!" To be honest, I was like, why? *lol* it's not my bed! But after she mentioned it about 5 times that day, we asked Jason to take a picture of us. Now that picture means the world to me! She wants to be my friend!!!!!
I hope she'll read this some day and know how much she means to me. I LOVE YOU Jena-bug! Bugga-boo! Sweetie-pie. Lovey-dove. Sweet-sis! Little-Lyn. Lets always be close, m'kay?