friends, pizza and pizookies

it's 9:30pm, i just got home from a much needed night out with friends.
spencer and olive are asleep on the floor downstairs and harrison is snoozing away in his crib.
i think this is what they call alone time?

tonight was a rare treat. my favorite high school friends were all  together (except for kelsey, why is hawaii so far away?) for 3 hours of uninterrupted girl talk. we laughed and cried over pizza and pizookies at old chicago. i'm sure we were a spectacle, even the waiter piped up here and there with a few comments, but mostly we were too enthralled in the conversation to notice anything not at our table. nothing around us mattered (carbs included) because we were together again.

as we went around the table and each gave our updates; real updates, good and bad, i couldn't help but feel gratitude for these girls. the girls who walked beside me through high school, who shaped me in so many ways, and who have influenced me and continue to influence me throughout my life. 

they are good people...such good people, and they are beautiful, in the truest most sincere form of the word. inside and out. 
they are mothers, wives, and professionals. they are capable. and they are people of faith and conviction.

we talked about marriage, work, kids and family. we were silly and serious and sincere. throughout dinner i kept having the thought that women need women. God put us here together for a reason, but so often we're all too afraid to talk about the real stuff. we exchange pleasantries and small talk, and then go home to wrestle with the hard stuff alone.

crazy,

when there are people in our lives to relate to. people that lift and lead and inspire. in those years since high school our lives have taken us down different paths and we're scattered hundreds of miles apart:idaho, texas, washington, hawaii, but we are so very much the same, and we need each other.