On having girlfriends

Hello!  I am back home after a whirlwind of a couple of weeks and I’m hoping to be able to give more time and dedication to this little blog.  Sorry, blog, for neglecting you.  I’m just the worst.

Life has been wild.  June 4^th was the last day of school.  I left straight from school that day to the airport where I would join my four best friends from college for a long girl’s weekend.  Greg was awesome when I proposed the trip months ago and said it'd be easy peasy for him to work and take care of June while I was gone.  He was so sweet about being the single parent while I took off for three days, but I think as the time got closer and closer he started to panic.  ALL BY MYSELF?  What if she cries in the night and wants to nurse?  What if she cries and only wants mama?  I told him he’d be fine but inside I was panicking a little in the inside too.  What if she does wake up at 3 am and is absolutely inconsolable because she wants my sweet nursing goodness? (Honestly almost all worries stemmed from the fact that we are still nursing.  It's hard being the only one who has the ultimate comfort capability.)

BUT everything turned out fine and I was enormously grateful for my girls' weekend.  (I came home Sunday night, attempted to pack, clean and write three sponsored posts on Monday, and then we flew out to Cancun on Tuesday.  WILD.)

The truth is it probably would have been the easiest to just bag the girls’ trip.  I know Greg was secretly hoping I would, and I think a lot of people couldn’t quite get their heads around my need to ditch husband and baby to frolic with girlfriends on the beach.  I could almost hear people's thoughts-  You’re going to California for three days with your friends and then going to Mexico the day after?  Isn’t that a bit excessive?  I suppose it may be, but my college friends are like family to me, and I knew I'd regret it if I didn't make the effort to get out to Cali to see my friends for a few days.  It is the only time of the year that I see some of these girls and honestly, I need this trip.  I need the time to forget that I'm a mom and forget that I'm a wife and forget that I'm a teacher and forget that I'm a blogger.  I need to go back to being 21 and totally care free and not have any responsibilities at all.  No one counting on me, relying on me, asking me how to do something.

In all honesty, the past year has been hard for me because I haven't felt like I've had really strong girlfriends like I have in the past.  One by one all of my college girlfriends moved from Utah until last May when Amy was the last one to hightail it out of Utah.  It has been a bit lonely for me to not have those best girlfriends here with me and I have struggled to make friends on that same level since.  Is it just me or is it so hard to make friends when you are married/ have children/ work?  It feels like it takes so much longer to reach the same level or connection that I could reach with women before marriage.  Have any of you read MWF seeking BFF?  I read parts of it this fall and mostly just really identified with the author's quest to find a best friend and her struggle to connect with women post college dorm life.  Adults are busy.  Even with friends that live locally, I feel like I'm lucky if I see them once a month.  Good friendships are so important to me, and I don't think they are that easy to come by.  In fact, I think I am pretty rare that I had such a solid group of girl friends in college that all make an effort to stay in touch.

Strong female relationships have always been very important to me, but I don't think I realized this until after I got married.  I think part of me thought that once I was married that I wouldn't need girlfriends any more.  That a spouse would somehow be able to magically fulfill my every relationship need.  Shockingly, Greg doesn't fulfill my ever relationship need.  Nor should he feel like he has to.  No man deserves that pressure to fulfill EVERY NEED.  He doesn't love to talk about good deals at H&M like my girls do, he doesn't enjoy celebrity gossip like my friends do, he doesn't have the same focus and intent to talk about the same subject for hours and hours like my girlfriends do.  And *gasp* he gets bored talking about that rude thing that that one person said after about two minutes.   (Also, he doesn't enjoy telling and hearing pregnancy and delivery stories for hours on end.  Is that just my friends or are all women kind of obsessed with that topic?)

On a deeper level, I suppose I need my girlfriends because I need to have people who identify with the struggles of being a woman.  There are some things I experience that Greg will just never understand.  And I won't ever understand all of his experiences.  And that's okay.  With my girlfriends, we just get each other.  All of main girlfriends work outside the home in some capacity.  Most of us have graduated college.  Most of us have kids.  We relate to each other and I need these women to listen to me stressing and crying and then in the next minute I need to laugh until I pee my pants because Amy lost a dare and is sucking on Vanessa's toe.  

That's what I got this weekend.  

Thank the heavens for good girlfriends. 

Amen and amen.

(For past annual girls' trips check out here and here and here.)

This is Courtney and me at one of our many pumping parties!  We had a pumping party about every six hours and we were the only ones invited.  Want to know how to get an invite?  You must currently be providing milk through your body to a very small human.  It was awesome.  And only kind of annoying.

 We went to a Cronut place for breakfast (Croissant + Donuts).  It was pretty yummy but, you know, slightly overpriced.  California, man.  They jack up the price on everything and it's hard for those of us who are used to paying rock bottom prices for everything.  

My friends in this picture from left to right: Courtney, Amy, Vanessa, me, Mandy.  Sally couldn't join us this go around because she just had a baby a few months ago.  Sally, you are dearly missed.  Also, Amy is having a baby ANY DAY NOW.

This picture pretty much sums up Amy and Vanessa's personalities perfectly.

We took some jumping pictures off of this lifeguard tower.  It seemed a lot cooler when we were doing it than it appears in these pictures. We were waiting for the sun to come out and kind of hard up for entertainment, that's all you need to know.

Sunshine= Pool time.

Amy lost a game of ultimate slaps= has to suck on Nessy's toe.  I was kind of hoping it would put Amy in to labor and I could be her birth coach.  It didn't.  No labor. 

HOT TUB.  We went every day.  Okay twice a day.  FINE WE WENT FOUR TIMES A DAY.

Post pool/ beach.  Ain't nothing wrong with a little group showering.  Also, I always think I am making slightly funny faces when I do things like this and then I look at the picture and it's just like, Woah, Bonnie.  Woah.

All of the beach pictures were taken with Mandy's GoPro.  Gosh I want one of those.  It was amazing.  At the beach some four year olds flirted with us and we all missed our kids.  Amy threw a crab at me.  I pulled out my shoulder from running out of the water like the idiot.

And that's a wrap for the weekend!  It was the best of times  it was the worst of times.

It was just the best of times.

Love you girls.  Can't wait for next year.  Thanks for being my besties forever.  Sal, we missed you so much.