Shadowlands

I think it's safe to say that the last three months have been amongst the most insane of my life. The Olympics feel like some crazy dream that happened forever ago and the trip to Mexico that seemed like it would never come has now had the audacity to be over. And my best friend Lisa got hitched and almost everyone I know from college showed up to celebrate.

Mexico was pretty perfect. Despite our assertions that all we were going to do was lay around, Corey and I kept fairly busy. We went to famous ruins and we swam in a cenote, we snorkeled, we played in the waves, we got massages. We drank more Diet Coke then the Jersey Shore cast off Spring Breakers drank tequila and we squeezed limes into a whole bunch of tacos. It was just the vacation I needed after Vancouver, and frankly, after the last two exhausting years.

(Thanks Jane for the ShakeIt Photo App. Feels so perfect for Mexican vacation photos!)

And then!

I went to Utah and these guys picked me up


I know, I know-you have cute kids/nephews/children you babysit but these two are mine and every single time I am around them it knocks the wind out of me how much I love them. They give me looks where I see their daddies faces and I can't believe I get to be related to all of these people.

My mom dropped me off where some of my SUU friends where staying and I pretty much didn't stop laughing until I got on the plane Sunday evening. I feel so lucky to have gone to school with such a fantastic group of people and that we've all stayed in touch so well. It's so nice to be around folks who knew you before you had any real idea who you were and yet they still manage to love you. Someone is bound to bring up some fabulous event you had completely forgotten and even though I am an adult woman with a grownup job, the boys will tease me mercilessly about something dumb I said ten years ago that somehow stays endlessly alive in their memories. These people feel like home in a way that is so easy and effortless that I honestly felt years and years melt away and it seemed like we were those dumb kids experimenting with the real world.

The best part of course was getting to see Lisa so happy. It was the first time I had met her husband(!) and so we all had to remind him over and over how lucky he was to get her. All I cared about was that he didn't seem to need us to get that. Lisa was a good 50% of the reason I didn't flee college my second semester in what would have been a scaredy-cat mistake of seriously epic proportions (someday I will run you through how my crush on a boy who ran for Student Body President at SUU is pretty much responsible for every good thing that happened from then on). She and I had a public speaking class together freshman year, she gave a talk on love and passed out the lyrics to Howard Jones' Everlasting Love. I think I talked about unicorns. We became dear dear friends and I haven't missed a day making my bed since the semester we started living together. We've been through a lot over the years. She lost her mom just before we graduated, my parents got divorced, her dad had a difficult second marriage, we've both had too many disappointing boy experiences to even start listing (only one of whom was the same boy), we've watched younger siblings and the vast majority of our friends get hitched and have kiddies. "katieandlisa" was one word for a long time and I think everyone knew that if you told either one of us a secret, we would tell the other one but no one else. (except when Brandon SPECIFICALLY told me not to tell Lisa he had bought a ring for his GF. And so I didn't. And then he was ALMOST bugged at me because he didn't tell her assuming I would.) Through all of it, Lisa has been one of the most thoughtful, grounded, kind, generous people I know. She keeps in touch with EVERYONE. She is actually the human Facebook and knew all kind of things about people long before we all started splattering it on the internet. She's the one who will catch in the obituaries that our friend lost a brother and there will be a note on it's way before anyone else knows. She was the one who was there for her little siblings when their mom died and she's the one who got her brother ready for his mission. The night she told me she was engaged her first concern was how I was going to feel since we're the tail end of singles in our group. Which was silly, because what kind of friend can begrudge someone she cares about finding the love of her life?

The reception was packed full of faces I hadn't seen in years and then we stayed out way too late at some funny little bar downtown where there was more laughing and teasing and laughing. I got a good nephew and family dose the next morning and then headed home to the apartment I fall more in love with every single day. All the post-event blues have worn off and the trip totally recharged me. Even a completely full email box Monday morning didn't dampen my good mood.

Here is one of my favorite photos from the weekend. Lisa looked amazing and I think the rest of us are holding up pretty well for being so close to middle age ; )