Girls ROCK!

Prepare yourself for a post that has nothing to do with me gushing about how adorable Gwen is. Shocking, I know. Here is proof that I have a life outside of motherhood...

When Rick and I graduated from BYU in 2001, we moved back up to the good old Northwest and got an apartment in Redmond. At our ward there, we met some amazing couples who were also in our same situation: newly married, just graduated, and entering the real world.

We had an awesome social life and did all sorts of things with our fun friends... camping, parties, game nights, etc. We soon started watching Survivor together every Thursday night. We all drew the name of a Survivor contestant. If your person got voted off on the show, you had to host the next week. Somehow were became the "Survivor Group". We even all helped each other make videos to audition for Survivor. Anyway, my point is, our social life with thriving.

And then something happened.

One by one, everybody started having babies. Although we still tried to get together as often as we could, babies have a way of complicating your life and altering your priorities.

Not too long after, everybody eventually moved from their Redmond apartments and entered the world of home ownership. Although some of us were still some what close by, we were much more spread out than before.

Fast forward several years: We were still seeing our "Survivor Friends", but only at at an occasional party or play group. Life seemed so much more complicated than before. I wondered how anybody ever made time for their friends.

One day, I was at a playgroup with my Survivor Mommies. We decided that none of us were getting the "me time" that we needed. We also realized how much we missed each others' company. Girls Night was born. We decided to get together every month, on the same day, at the same time, at the same place. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible (ie: hot chocolate late in the evening after the kids are mostly down). Anything too complicated wouldn't survive.

Our first girls night was a year and a half ago and we are still going strong!

Our time together has been more than just sitting around and just sipping hot chocolate. It is more like a huge group therapy session- except with a lot of laughing. I have come to depend on these nights. These girls are so amazing. Every month I come home with a huge emotional boost (and a case of the giggles). These girls seriously rock.

Last weekend we had a slumber party at my house to commemorate a year and a half of our get-togethers. Rick and Gwen escaped to Bob and Cathy's, so we had the house all to ourselves. We had a fantastic time- and that is an understatement.

The first thing on the agenda was to eat way too much. We had cheese fondue, chocolate fondue, and all sorts of appetizers and desserts.

TeriAnne and Rachel brought their little ones who are too young to leave at home. They were angels- we hardly knew they were here.

After we ate, We spent over a half hour trying to get a decent group shot of us using the timer on my camera. With six vain women, it is inevitable that someone won't like the picture and want to do another one. Here are just five photos out of the million we took...

I think we are trying to be sexy here

I forgot to set the timer on this one and caught them when they weren't ready. I made this mistake more than once.This is our tough stuff poseAgain, a very sexy pose. I'm sure Maxim will be calling us soon

I think this is the most normal one we got

We eventually stopped talking and eating long enough to play the game, Loaded Questions. We learned that there are actually a few things that we didn't know about each other. For instance:

~TeriAnne can do a back flip on the trampoline.

~Lisa can pick up everything with her toes- and look sexy while doing it

~Rachel can produce all sorts of random facts and trivia on command.

~Emily can do cool tricks with her tongue. (No, she didn't demonstrate this, you sickos)

~Anna Marie has super quick butt muscles.

Soon it was time for Midnight Margaritas (virgin, of course...or were they?). Emily and I had our own mini Iron Chef competition and went up against each other to make the best one. I think mine won in the end, but only because mine was really sweet. If you took a sip of mine, you couldn't even taste hers after. It also happened to be TeriAnne's birthday. We broke out the cheesecake and sang to her, but we were too full to actually eat the cheesecake.
For the rest of the night we talked. And talked. And talked. Lisa is notorious for going to bed at 9 pm, so we were shocked ( and proud) when she stayed up until about 1 am. At about 3:30 am, she came back down. She must have sensed that the conversation was getting very spicy. It was probably after 5 am before that last of the blabber mouths finally passed out. We had the babies for alarm clocks, so we were up again by 8 am and watched 27 Dresses.

We ended our party with breakfast at Maltby Cafe. It was so tasty! I also convinced the girls that it was appropriate to order dessert in addition to our breakfasts.

After breakfast, we stood in the parking lot and talked for another 20 minutes before we went our separate ways. Men will never understand how it is possible for women to talk for 14+ hours and not run out of things to say.

Thank you to my 4 sweet angels that that always make me feel better about myself. Also, thank you to our enduring husbands that actually let us get away with this.