{ Go East, Young Woman, Go East! }

 Before it becomes ancient history, I'd like to tell you about my road trip to Eastern Washington two weeks ago. It was my first week jobless, and I jumped at the chance to take a little more time than usual and visit my dear friend Anna, who lives 300 miles away. You can read Anna's blog here, but we've been friends since way before blogging. Like, our moms were pregnant with us together. Sometimes I call us fetal friends.

The first thing I did when I got to Anna's hometown was park in front of her house, run in and hug her, and head down the hill to meet my cousin Christy and my brother Joe for coffee. They both live nearby and this was the only time that worked out for us to see each other. {Aren't I a horrible houseguest, Ann?}

Joe, Christy and I had a great time catching up. There was a significant amount of girly talk, since Christy just got engaged, as well as a significant amount of mechanical talk, because Christy is taking some sort of let's-disassemble-and-reassemble-your-car's-engine-in-less-than-25-minutes college class that goes waaaaaaay over my head. She is clearly a very well-rounded young woman. ;-) It had been much too long since I'd last spent time with these folks, and it was so fun to chat!

I'll let you guess which is Christy and which is Joe in the photos below:

That wasn't too hard, was it?

It never feels like you get to spend enough time with friends who live far away, does it? Regardless, the time that we do have together is always so rich. I love just being able to do normal life with friends: grocery shopping, errand running, going to church and Bible study. Getting to know what their normal, everyday lives are like. Anna and I, and little Oliver, did all of those things during my time with them. Anna's husband Tim was present for a lot of it, too, but somehow I didn't get any photos of him. We cooked, we did laundry {oh did we ever do laundry...I'd like to take a moment to say that if you're ever about to shake up a bottle of oil and vinegar salad dressing, during Bible study potluck, in a complete stranger's house, in the presence of 20+ people you just met, please make sure the lid is securely attached to the bottle before shaking! Otherwise you may anoint yourself, the person standing next to you, and the kitchen with oil and vinegar salad dressing. THAT'S not awkward or anything. The silver lining is that I learned Anna's stain removal tricks and maybe she'll write a blog post about them someday.}, where was I? Oh yes, we did laundry, we watched girly movies, we ate delicious food...it was lovely.

 

Oliver's scrunchy faces kill me. He is such a little ham! The darlingest there ever was.

On Sunday afternoon we took a walk through a lovely neighborhood full of beautiful, stately old houses. I'm a sucker for old houses, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Look at Oliver's feet go! He was happy to be out, too.

I'm so glad I was able to make this trip. In spite of missing Mike something fierce {4 1/2 days turned into a really long time, from that perspective!!}, it was a really special time spent with dear friends I don't see nearly often enough. Even the relationships where you feel like you're able to pick up right where you left off, no matter how long it's been, are worth the effort and investment of road trips and long weekends away from the comforts of home.