The Old And The New

I've officially made the decision to stay in California. I know I've already been living here for three months, but don't doubt that I had thoughts weekly about packing it all up and going home to Colorado.

Part of the moving process, of course, is making new friends. I really don't have a hard time meeting people, so I do already have a few handfuls of friends I can call up and plan to spend time with any given week. I don't however have any friends within walking distance like I had for the past two years in Las Vegas; where I had lived as close as two apartments away from one of my closest friends. Then of course, I also had wonderful roommates for a year and a half that I would see on a daily basis. My roommates were great girls, and great friends!

One thing I miss is that established relationship and knowledge about my friends and their lives. The friends that could sit in a room without talking and not be uncomfortabe, friends who would randomly run errands with you - even if it meant walking to Walmart in the middle of the night for toiletpaper or the next morning's breakfast, or friends that you could just show up at their front door unexpected and they'd invite you in and let you to stay for hours. Friends who'd come find you when life was getting you down and do something nice for you like buying your favorite smoothie or replenishing the stack of tissues while you'd bawl your eyes out, or friends that would go along with your crazy ideas/adventures and come up with some of their own.

Friendships like that take time, and work! And while I'm working at developing friendships like that here, I sometimes just wish that it was already done. I wish someone here already knew me; about my life, about my past experiences, and that I already knew everything about them. It's kind of lonely without that kind of friend readily on hand for life's daily adventures.

Now - who wants to go to the store with me?

Kids!

I recently got to spend two and a half weeks in Colorado visiting most of my family - and I loved it! My older sister was having a baby, so I was asked to come keep her house running while she was in the hospital. While my sister and my mom said I was a big help to them, I feel like I really got a good deal: free rent, free food, and plenty of playtime with my nieces and nephew!! Here are a few things that we did:

Field day! Man, I hadn't been to one of these in ages! My oldest niece Sami was just finishing up 1st grade, and did VERY well at field day... just look at that form in landing the long jump! She came home with mostly blue and red ribbons (1st and 2nd place), with only a couple white and yellow (3rd and 4th place).



Only a day or two after field day my sister had her baby! Cute little Janessa joined their family early on May 21st. It was very fun to wake up the girls in the morning by showing them a picture of their new sister - instant smiles! I got Sami off to school, and spent the day listening to Cassidy and Shelby asking when Sami was getting home so we could go see their mom and the baby at the hospital. It turned out Shelby wasn't so thrilled to meet her sister, but she did let her hold her finger once.



One of the kids' favorite things to do was to play in Aunt Melissa's room. Most of the time they were interested in playing Plants vs. Zombies with me on my computer - which they were getting pretty good at! I even taught Jackson to say "zombies"... and then he cracked me up by copying the game by saying "zombies...coming!" When they weren't playing the game they would find other ways to entertain themselves by playing in the closet, swinging like monkeys from the underside of the bunk bed, or in Jackson's case pretending to be a pirate... but most often he would be a lion.

Every time we would load up in the car I would turn on some music for the kids. At the beginning of my time with them I selected a country CD for them to listen to, and soon enough Cassidy was hooked on the first track - and subsequently requested to listen to that song over and over! Eventually, all three girls got pretty good at singing along to the chorus (okay - I tried for hours and couldn't get this video to load... if you want to see what I'm talking about you'll have to look HERE at my sister's blog - it's the last video on the post).

I also spent some time one evening helping Sami and Cassi practice their cartwheels. They really were trying hard, but couldn't quite pull off the moves. I helped show them where their legs and arms were supposed to be by flipping them in slow motion while talking them through it, and soon enough it was starting to catch on! Sami was getting pretty good by bedtime:

I had so much fun with these kids!!