A Very Girlie Weekend

This past weekend was wonderful! It was chocked full of laughing, shopping, catching up, and lots of girl talk.

It started out with Jess and her friend Molly coming up Saturday for what we thought would be a very productive wedding planning day. Molly was legally married right before her husband deployed, but they are planning a large ceremony and reception after his return. The WE channel was hosting a bridal expo downtown. We figured with Jess and Molly planning Molly's wedding, and me helping Aimie plan her's it would be an awesome time. Unfortunately... not so much. The show was SO small. There were probably 20 venders there total.

We stayed long enough to watch the bridal dress runway show. Well... when I say watch, I really mean critique. With Jess and I being former dancers, we're all about stage production and management, which this show was seriously lacking. Oh well, it at least produced some laughs and entertainment, even if it wasn't the kind they were hoping for. :-)

So, after sitting in traffic for, I kid you not, a half an hour trying to get out of the parking deck, we decided to head over to SouthPark mall for some lunch and light shopping. With the girls living in Fayetteville, they were very excited to see a full size, nonmilitary town mall.

First things first... lunch.

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Then it was on to the shopping. There was one store that was hands down everyone's favorite! I was excited to introduce the girls to it as they had never experienced the awesomeness that is Anthropologie. I could literally outfit myself and my entire home in their products if everything wasn't so dern expensive. I mean, $70-80 for a top and $30 for a candle might not be unheard of for some people, but for a die hard Target girl, that's a freaking lot of money.

But we did take advantage for the wonderful things for a photo session.


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Then it was off to my favorite place in the world, Paper Source. Were we decided to have another photo session.


*click to enlarge* Note: all pictures taken by Jess as this ding bat forgot her camera


That was such a fun trip! We got lots and lots of ideas, plus picked up some awesome things, plus had so much fun showing each other our favorite finds.

But, my dear Cinderella, it was getting late, and the girls had a 3 hour drive ahead of them. So it was back to my house before they headed off for the teaming metropolis of Fayetteville. (Sense the sarcasim).

But this was only the first half of the girly weekend!

Saturday morning, after dragging Dan and Shannon out of bed for an extremely early breakfast at 11am, ;-), I headed out to the Monroe area to see a very dear friend. April and I were literally BFF's until the age of 9 or so. We lived across the street growing up and if I wasn't at my house, I was at hers and visa versa. She, and her family, are a staple in our family photo album, from birthday parties, to dress up parties, to simply hanging out or torturing my under brother (and trust me we did that!)

But unfortunatly, with many tears, her family moved an hour away when we were about 9 years old. Now it doesn't seem very far, but at 9 when you have no control over where you go, when and how, then it's very hard to stay in touch. We talked on the phone for a while but it just wasn't the same. Eventually we lost touch. My mom attended April's wedding in 1998 while I was living in Jacksonville, FL dancing. Other than that and the rare sighting every once in a while, there was no contact.

Until about two weeks ago when we found each other on Facebook. And after 20 years, we met up yesterday afternoon at her house. Since there were 5 of them (She has 4 kids and a husband which makes 6 but he was out of town yesterday), and only 1 of me, we figured that was the easist thing.

She truly has a beautiful, charming, and welcoming home.


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And beautiful children, who (all but one) were not at all camera shy and let me take lost of pictures of them.




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April and I had such a wonderful time catching up, and trust me there was lots to catch up on. She is also a homeschool graduate and is now homeschooling her children as I will, so there was lots to talk about that. We spent about 3 hours together, and could have spent many, many more. I am looking forward to renewing this relationship and it once again becoming very important in my life.

Since I had Jay's camera with me, and it's hard to take myspace style self portraits with it, we only got one picture of the two of us and it was with my crappy cell phone. (But I can tell you that my mom was very excited to get a real time picture of the two of us hanging out). But I will leave you with these images.

Cheers to the past, hopef for the future!