A Girls Weekend

This past Memorial Day weekend, Chris and I spent the holiday apart which would usually not make for an awesome weekend but this was the exception.  I got the chance to spend 5 days with four of my best buddies from college while Chris had Zach, who is the reason Chris and I first met, come stay at our place. Chris will blog about his weekend another time, but this post is all about me and the 4 lovely women that I got to spend my time with. I headed down to Austin, TX last Thursday and met up with my fabulous friends Tara, MaryAnn, Bekah and Lindsay. We all lived on the same floor in the dorms at BYU and have managed to keep the friendships alive even after 10 years. Having never been to Texas before, I was a little surprised by how normal and awesome Austin is- which wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting a lot more cowboy hats, giant belt buckles and pickup trucks but instead Austin felt completely hip and urban. My opinion of Texas has greatly improved since my trip but maybe that was because I got to spend this trip with such great company.

Three out of the five of us were pregnant and showing, and I was glad that I was not the only one that needed to be constantly eating but I was jealous of Tara and Bekah’s very flat stomachs.

I hope the girls know what an awesome time I had despite my lack of pictures. I was having too much fun to bust out my camera and be bothered with taking photos- I just wanted to enjoy as much time as I could with these women. Now though I’m sad that I don’t have more photos of all the awesome things that we did (and ate) but let me tell you, this weekend was jammed packed with fun. We went tubing, ate some killer BBQ, hiked and walked a lot, enjoyed a bit of the city atmosphere, and ate one of the best cupcakes I’ve ever had.  This is something that I hope we do much  more often than once in every 10 years, but this weekend was priceless for me and a much-needed vacation from my everyday life. And next time, I hope we have the complete crew there- we missed you Christine, Jenn and Teagan!

Even though it was much-needed, I still missed my family like crazy and couldn’t wait to see them again. I barely made my flight out of the Austin airport and ended up using my “delicate condition” to my advantage by claiming need of a wheelchair to breeze through the insanely long security line. I thought I had got to the airport with plenty of time to spare but I hadn’t counted on the enormous number of post-holiday travelers who were also trying to fly out Tuesday morning. Luckily this giant pregnant belly is good for something and they gave me a wheelchair without a question and I was able to make my flight with about less than 5 minutes to spare.

When I finally got home, I was rewarded with the sweetest smiles, kisses and snuggles from my child who is not usually very keen on being snuggly. It was awesome and I took full advantage of it.

Of course, it didn’t last long. The next morning, Brendan was back to normal and wouldn’t even smile for me when I tried taking some photos of him.

To my wonderful friends- thanks for the awesome conversations, fun activities and good food. You guys are so inspiring to me and I can’t wait to see you all again!Thanks to Chris (and Zach too) for taking care of Brendan while I was gone- it was such a treat for me and I know it probably wasn’t the easiest.