College Friends, Reunited

A couple of weeks ago Mike and I met up with our friends Debbie and Brad at Fazzoli's for a quick dinner. Debbie and Brad are off to Rexburg for Brad's new job at BYU-Idaho. It is too bad that Debbie and I didn't take advantage of the time we had living close together to see each other more often. Debbie is such a wonderful person, and I'm sad she is moving further away, but I'm excited for their family and their new adventures and opportunities!

Olivia and Debbie's little boy, Caden, hit it off pretty well. They had fun running around the restaurant together. Since we got together, Olivia will often randomly ask me if we are going to "Caden's house."

It was appropriate that we chose Fazzoli's to meet at, because this was our eatery of choice back when we roomed together at BYU. We and our other roommates loved to go to Fazzoli's and order the $1.29 side salads and then feast on the free lemon water and delicious all-you-can-eat bread sticks. We were cheap!

In honor of my visit with Debbie at Fazzoli's, I thought it would be fun to record some other fun memories from my Colony days with Amy, Debbie, Andy, Emily, and Nola:

"Post Date Survey" hanging on the front door

Debbie calls "the crack"

Breakfast parties

the garage-sale humongous Margarita glass that Amy liked to eat her rice krispies from

pick-up soccer games at the elementary school

Nola driving her car on the sidewalks at BYU

trying not to be late for church and parking in the "Service Vehicle only" spots on campus

Nola getting a $50 ticket for aforementioned infraction (we helped her pay it)

Debbie's surprise Oreo-cookie birthday party

Spiderman hunched on our kitchen counter

Sundance film festival (getting waved at by Pauly Shore and seeing Mckully Caulkin [sp??])

Amy sprinting down Mt. Timp in record time

Waking up at 3:30am with Debbie

I remember we listened to lots of: Norah Jones, Weezer, Cold Play, and Amy and Debbie's great mixes

"10 second window!" (doesn't exist, by the way, it's more of a 2 second window)

Tucson road trip

Happy dance (and about a billion photos of us posing this way)

"Oh, gall!"

And many, many more that I'm sure I missed. Fun times!

Big Sister Likes to Play Too!

First Games of Peek-A-Boo

I'm a Seasoned Mother Now . . .

. . .Because I flew across country, alone with two kids, on a a red eye flight (but the tickets were cheap!) Yup, just me, alone, to lug a three-month old, a two-year old, a beastly double stroller, and two car seats across country on a flight that left at 11pm from Salt Lake City with a scheduled four-hour layover at JFK (at least it was with Jet Blue, so I could distract Olivia with some "kid shows," as she calls them).

Despite this trip's rocky start (it actually didn't go too bad, thanks to the kindness of strangers helping me mangle all my baggage around : ), we had a great time visiting my parents in Massachusetts.

Olivia got to hang with her cute cousins Tyler and Connor and JT got to meet his Pops for the first time.

Here are Olivia and Tyler picking flowers together. Don't fear for this boy's masculinity though, my oldest brother Sean (his Dad) has successfully indoctrinated him with a sports obsession. Tyler is crazy about balls and sports of all kinds.

The two cute cousins hugging good bye. It's too bad they don't get to see each other more often!

Here is John T. and my Dad meeting for the first time.

More of JT and his Pops. My Dad looks pretty buff for being almost 60. He's gone crazy for triathlons. While I was visiting we went for a few runs together. I thought going running itself was a good enough workout, but after we finished running my Dad would proceed to go swim 2 miles or bike 20 miles. I hope I can be in that kind of shape when I'm his age!

The majority of our days were spent lounging at the good ole' town beach (fresh water lake in the town I grew up in). My summers as a child were spent at this beach, and I remember fondly packing a picnic lunch and spending the day at the beach with my siblings, pestering my mom to watch me jump off the diving board again and again.

Olivia loved "Nana's beach" and became quite daring in the water by the time we left. Here she is playing "motor boat" with Mommy.

"Motor boat, motor boat go so slow. Motor boat, motor boat go so fast. Motor boat, motor boat, step on the GAS!"

We had a blast, and I'm glad we'll be visiting again this month (this time Mike's coming too, phew!)