Friendship of the Grown-Up Variety

I have been thinking a lot lately about the friendships you experience as an adult, and how they are different from the friendships you have at earlier life stages.

For one thing, it is harder to make friends as you get older. For another, once you are married or have kids, you not only have to find people that accept you and mesh well with you, you kind of hope they have a spouse and kiddos that mesh with yours.

If you're lucky you have friends from your youth that meet all of this criteria... or they are just more accepting because you already have so much history together.

Earlier this week, Daniel's good friend (and best man from our wedding) came to visit us, his family in tow. 

While we don't see them nearly enough (it's been 3 years since our last visit), we love to get together when we can. They are the kind of friends we can just pick up with where we dropped off, even three years later.

As an added bonus, even though our kids are slightly off in ages, they play really well together.

We had so much fun taking Matt and Melissa, and their kids, to the Creative Discovery Museum here in Chattanooga, then to our neighborhood playground, and finally to the Pumpkin Patch playground on our mountain.

We visited. We ate good food. We enjoyed the sunshine. And the visit ended too soon. I'm so grateful for the friendships we have, old and new, near and far.

While it can be increasingly difficult to make and maintain friendships in this season of life, we have been blessed with some really great friends over the years. I hope our kids grow up to have these longstanding friendships as well.

Speaking of friendship, one of my favorite bloggers recently instagrammed this photo and caption:

139. On March 1st I began tallying how many times someone not in our family of 7 stopped by our house (unexpected & invited). 139. Our back door broke long ago from overuse. Back door visitors are my favorite. They don't mind the dishes or the shedding rug or the shoeless kids running every direction. I'll keep making cups of coffee and offering random snacks if they make sure my back door stays broken...

A photo posted by Ashley Campbell (@underthesycamore) on Mar 29, 2016 at 7:05pm PDT

It captures what I long for (not necessarily 139 visitors in one month), but a door that is always open, regardless of the messiness of our house or life.

Thankful for: Old Friends

If you are like us, you might have moved more than once in your adult life. While moving can be difficult, I am thankful for the opportunity to make new friends. I am also thankful that occasionally we get the opportunity to reconnect with old friends {though this happens less than we would like}.

Yesterday, we needed to make a brief trip to the Nashville area to pick up new tires for Daniel's car. We decided that it would be a good time to squeeze in a quick visit with longtime friends, Matt and Melissa. Matt and Daniel have known each other since they were teenagers and Matt was also the best man in our wedding.

Matt and Melissa have two precious kids: Zeke and Ella. Zeke is about 2 years older than Jack. Interestingly this is a similar age gap that Matt and Daniel share. I love to see these little guys play together. It was nice to meet Ella for the first time as well. I can't believe how small a 6-month-old baby feels in my arms! She is such a content girl and has the sweetest smiles.

Matt and Daniel had a good visit – Matt even convinced Daniel to help him hang some siding! And Melissa and I enjoyed catching up as well.

Being able to keep in touch with all of our many friends, both near and far, has been such a blessing in our lives.

Trip to Nashville

We had a pretty good trip over to Nashville this weekend. It seems like we are on our second wave of weddings since we graduated from college. Last weekend Daniel went to Colorado to be in a wedding and this weekend, Nashville.

We were able to see Daniel's fam and then Saturday we were able to see several friends. I actually ran out to Mt Juliet for breakfast with a high school friend and her husband while Daniel headed into Murfreesboro to go on an 18 mile bike ride with a high school buddy.

We met up in Murfreesboro and had lunch with Daniel's dad and then headed to downtown Nashville for an early dinner with some friends we knew from our time in Cookeville. Why is it that so many visiting times revolve around eating?

After dinner, we walked around downtown where 1) I ended up getting blisters on my feet due to wearing dress shoes and 2) I am a moron because I walked over a grate in a dress and had a Marilyn Monroe experience where all of a sudden air was blowing up from underneath me and my dress kind of took flight. At least I was walking with Hillary BEHIND Daniel & Marshall and when I finally got control of my dress and looked around, no one seemed to have noticed besides Hillary! After grabbing a coffee and walking around and visiting some more, Daniel and I headed down to West End to the Cathedral of Incarnation for the 7:30 wedding.

Daniel really enjoyed getting to see several people he had known from high school. After leaving the wedding, we wandered around downtown and found where Daniel's company's Nashville branch is located and we drove my Cummins Station which is where the start up company I am working for is considering getting office space. It is kind of hard to imagine where we will be in 2-5 years. We have so many friends that are in Nashville now or planning on moving there in the near future. But on the other hand, we are enjoying Charlotte and we want to finish renovating our house and live in a FINISHED house for a little while...