Making New Friends

It's so great to hear from old friends, so last week I was thrilled to see a new message in my inbox from my old college room-mate Laura. I met Laura freshman year on the 6th floor of Holes Hall at St. Cloud State University. We were dorm neighbors and hit it off right away. She introduced me to her friends from her hometown Alexandria, and I spent a large portion of my college days hanging out with the Alex crew. 

After graduation, we both moved back to our hometowns and tried to stay in contact. As many know, life starts to move faster in the "real world" and time slipped away. We managed to stay up-to-date on each others lives through Facebook, sharing wedding photos and news of babies - and every year we exchanged Christmas cards. It had been nearly 6 years since we'd last seen each other. After reading her message explaining she was coming down to the cities to take Jayne and Lucy to the Children's Museum and invited Harper and I to meet her - I was ecstatic. 

Saturday morning after making our chocolate chip and sprinkle pancakes we kissed Mitch goodbye and headed to St. Paul. Mitch and I took Harper to the Children's Museum once before back in March, so I was excited to see how she reacted to the exhibits 8 months later. We walked inside with Harper "ooo-ing and ahh-ing", paid our admission and put on our green sticker. First stop, the water station. Harper loved playing with all the water toys, and even tried taking the rubber duck with her.

Shortly after arriving we met up with Laura, her two little girls Jayne and Lucy and her Mom. It was so great to see her and finally meet those little ones! We had a blast running around the Children's Museum with the Nelson's and Harper enjoyed meeting her new friends. Harper and Jayne were still pretty independent when playing but did manage to interact a few times. After a couple hours of fun, we grabbed a quick lunch before nap time. It was wonderful catching up with Laura, and realizing after 6 years we practically picked up where we left off. I'm hoping we find a time to get the girls together again soon! 

Saturday night we had an adult night planned. Our friend Matt was celebrating his 30th birthday, and we certainly weren't going to miss it. Mitch's parents took Harper for the night, so we could have a night on the town. We met Jennie, Mike and Amanda at CRAVE at the West End for a quick dinner before heading to Legends in NE Minneapolis. Dinner was terrific, and the birthday celebration was a blast. 

Sunday morning we were Harper free since Bob and Deb kept her overnight. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us) they had to deal with day lights saving messing up Harper's sleep schedule. She didn't quite understand "fall back" and that we got to enjoy an extra hour of sleep. They brought her home that morning, and we immediately headed outside to rake some of our leaves. The backyard was covered thanks to our neighbors tree and we decided to make it a family effort. Just to clarify - by family effort I mean Mitch did most of the raking while I snapped pictures of Harper playing in them. We all bundled up and grabbed our rakes. Harper thought the giant pile of leaves was pretty fun. She did a little jumping, running and sitting in the giant mound and even managed to keep her winter hat on in the process! Unfortunately after raking 3 large lawn bags full of leaves that morning - the wind picked up throughout the day and managed to fill our yard again. I see more raking in our future, oh joy! 

We're heading into a plan-free weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. In just a couple weeks the flurry of holiday and birthday celebrations begin, so I'm going to soak up these free days.

Have a great weekend! 

Until next time...

The Helleen's