Birthday Buddies Finally Meet!

My friend Christie and I have known each other since Freshman year of college. We roomed together in the Alpha Chi house, at Cheley Camp one summer and both lived in Denver at the same time. So, we go back pretty far :)

Our friendship has grown and strengthened over the years as we have ironically gone down lifes bumpy road simultaneously and have pulled each other through some of the big bumps. It seems as though whatever comes her way is bound to come mine and vice versa.

Here are a few of the similarities: Both have a husband named Travis, both have mom's named Debbie, her husband's middle name and Natalie's middle name are the same (had no clue when I named Natalie Rae!...this is something I just discovered yesterday!!), Natalie and Lily were born less than a day apart, both girls weighed exactly 7 lbs and were exactly 20 inches. On a sad note, we both had 7 year old golden retrievers who suddenly passed away from a rare hearttumor (her dog passed over the summer and Max passed in December) both of us had a miscarriage between after our first pregnancy and before our 2nd. In general, it seems as though anything major happening in one of our lives, seems to fall upon the other within a short amount of time....job changes, marriage, kids, etc...some happy, some not so happy, but either way we have been going through it together . There is no doubt the crossing of our paths was planned long before we knew each other.

Christie lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado now with her husband and almost 2 year old daughter, Lily, and they are expecting a 2nd baby in September. No, we are not going through this together!...she is just catching up to our 2 kid status :) She and Lily made a trip to Dallas this week to visit her parents and we decided it would be great to get together since they were so close. So, we decided to meet in the middle at Gainsville to have lunch and do a little shopping. We had a GREAT time :) Natalie and Lily are still very close in size, but Lily's vocabulary is well beyond Natalie's! Hopefully our sweet girl will start learning a few more words now that she can HEAR us :) Anyway, it was so much fun to see Christie...she is doing great and I am so excited about the new baby...can't wait to find out what she is having....if it's a girl they are considering Hannah for a name (she knows about our Hannah, but has loved the name since she was a child!!!)

Lily is the sweetest, most layed back little girl and pretty as can be. She looks just like her Mama and Grandma....imagine that right? Natalie looks just like her Mama and Grandma! Natalie was a little slow to warm up to Lily, but she finally came around after awhile. She and Lily really enjoyed watching the ducks out the window of the Cracker Barrel where we had lunch. They also had lots of fun climbing the fireplace hearth and jumping off at the end. The gift shop had lots of interesting things to look at and the girls had fun playing with all of the toys.

It's been 5 years since Christie and I have seen each other so it was really good to see her...makes me think of all the fun we had together in our younger years. While we lived in Denver we made tons of day trips to Keystone, Breckenridge, and Vail to ski. Ahhhhh, I miss those days! I am so thankful that Christie and I have managed to keep in touch over the years despite the distance between us. It's always fun to talk to her to see what new things we have in common :) Final thought on this subject for the day....will our girls share life's up's and down's like their mom's do???? It will be fun to find out :)