old friends and new offices

so i made a quick trip to fayetteville this past weekend to celebrate my mom's birthday with my family. we had a fun time reminiscing, particularly about all of the crazy stuff that alan got into when he was younger. nothing like digging up embarrassing stories on your brother infront of his wife to get some entertainment :)

later on, i was able to meet up with elizabeth, one of my long-time friends that was in town for the weekend as well. granted, she had to travel from manhattan--a little further than me, but we were excited to see each other nonetheless. she was at home working on some wedding details for her and jeremy's big day coming up in december.

while she was at home, she was cleaning out her room and happened upon the motherload of notes, letters and general nostalgic items. this included a typed "story" that we created of our futures during one of our "gang green" sleepovers in high school.

yes, "gang green." the name stuck after the group of us all showed up one night wearing various shades of green, and being that we all enjoy puns that also sound like decaying skin diseases, we took it and ran with it. we were big fans of st. patrick's day. and even got t-shirts a couple of years. (i still wear mine occasionally around the house.)
our "initiation" included dressing up in poodle skirts for midnight outings where we purchased the ingredients needed for making chocolate chip pancakes with green food coloring--and general band dork merriment. along with a fair share of drama, boy issues, competition for seats or positions in band, etc. but i still love those girls.

and the letter that elizabeth unearthed showed just how much time i had on my hands back then. i decorated the three-page letter (written in 1999 while she was at governor's school) with colored pencil drawings all around margins. this was also around the same time i spent every thursday night making "happy friday" cards for about 5 or 10 of my friends to put in their lockers. granted, it's not like i didn't have a life. i just loved my friends dearly.
i'm so glad that we keep things like this, cause i know i'll have blast reading back through them one day. and i imagine my kids finding them and reading them, too. and in a way, as long as we keep them, it reminds us of those friendships and allows us to keep in touch and "pick up where we left off" when we get that next opportunity.

and finally, i spent yesterday morning creating my new space.
my supplies had grown over the weekend after mom and i went to ollie's, sorta like a big lots on steroids. they had so many books, games and puzzles, including a huge selection of books from lifeway christian bookstore (not work stuff, obviously, but i did get a couple of things i thought we could use for youth group.) at any rate, i'm happy with the new set-up and to have a great working space. in a crazy way, i do miss all of us being in one room and getting to socialize, but it is nice to have a little more peace and quiet. and the shelves! the glorious shelves! (they continue to the right, and i put my puppets out this morning...) when we expand our office a little bit more, we're hoping to have a play therapy room and then i'll get to move a lot of this stuff again :) but i'm happy with where we are now--back on the side of town where i used to live, used to work, and am very familiar. yay!

alright, that's it for now. have to start thinking about bed soon...