Rare Treat With The Casey's in Houston

So, I have a best friend. A best friend that knows my deepest, darkest secrets. My dreams, my weaknesses and everything in between. We talk sometimes two, three, four times a week and sometimes have weeks with no conversations.

When all four of our children were in diapers, we went through a stage where we left one another four to five minute voice mails, getting one another caught up on our lives and giving/receiving much needed advice, until one of our cell phones would rudely cut us off. (We would usually call back and continue our "one-sided" conversation with a second insanely long voicemail message.) That's how much we love one-another, care for one another and are truly intertwined into almost every detail of one another's lives. The only problem is, we are best friends, with two hundred miles in between our homes and therefore our families and everyday lives.

So a few weeks ago, it was a true rare treat to get to spend a whole weekend, all eight of us, just hanging out. We imagined what it would be like if we lived a mere two miles from one another. And we are happy to report, after 12 years of being best friends, we thought we picked it  up quite naturally!

Once we pulled up on Friday evening, Michael and Alli, had a backyard of FUN, FUN, FUN ready for the kids and we had a spectacular steak dinner. We just played with the kids and caught up. Thank goodness for blogs, we felt like we were able to pick up right from the last blog post on the stages of where we are with our four kids and what we have been up to, leaving time to really savor in being all in the same room, for once.

Now, don't feel too bad for us, we manage to "get-away" on a girl's long weekend about once a year and visit each other at least a couple times a year, on our own! Alli is the type of sentimental friend that is ridiculously good at writing sweet notes to me, cutting out articles that apply to my life or something I'm going through and having a memory of steel. She will ask me how something went weeks and months later and I am SHOCKED that she even remembers I was going through the rough stage at work or having a little tiff with a family member. The girl is so thoughtful, so I can't say it really surprised me while I was washing my hands for dinner and saw a card that I had written her earlier this year, telling her how much her friendship meant to me, above her kitchen sink along side picture of her sweet children. I cried a tear and realized yet again, what a best friend I have 200 hundred miles away.