Woe! It’s Wednesday: Friends, part 2

I had a lovely time at the spa a couple of weeks ago with my old friends that I blogged about here. My concerns about the minerals and my skin allergy were unfounded. I was no worse (and perhaps a tiny bit better) after the visit. Of course, I did avoid the actual mineral baths and instead enjoyed the saline pool, the hot and cold pools, and the various other pools the spa offered.

Darling Grand-daughter fixing the face
Darling Grand-daughter fixing the face

Now we get to take another trip with long time friends. There’s some overlap in these groups so we get to see some of these people again soon. We’re leaving today for a long weekend in Yosemite at our friend’s family cabin. We’ve been visiting this cabin for over twenty-five years now. Our daughters grew up looking forward to cabin trips. Now our grand-daughters love the cabin too.

This trip will be a mini-reunion with the arrival of a family who moved out of state several years ago. They’re coming back with their grown kids and grand kids, so it will be a busy and wonderful time of making memories, eating, swimming (presuming there’s still water, always a concern in August), drinking, puzzles, reading, digging in the dirt, collecting rocks and feathers, forest golf, ping pong, Rook, cribbage, relaxing, laughing, and having fun.

The dog and house sitter is booked. The menu planning is done. The shopping and packing is done. We’re ready to hit the road!

Where’s your favorite place to make memories?

Woe! It’s Wednesday: Reunited …

… and it feels so good.

We had a family reunion of sorts recently. https://i0.wp.com/cdn.buuteeq.com/upload/3625/family-reunion-sign.jpg.852x286_default.jpg

Once upon a time, in a magical land known as Southern California, four couples met together to study God’s word and share each others’ lives.

The group expanded and decreased and ebbed and flowed for a number of years. But the basic four had a special bond. They vacationed together. They brought meals when babies were born. They prayed for each other during job transitions and life decisions.

Two of the couples moved away.

Still they stayed in touch.

If the American divorce rate is 50% (and it sort of is … I learned lots of interesting facts when I googled and researched American divorce rate), then the law of averages would say that in the roughly twenty-eight years since we started meeting together, two of the couples would be divorced.

But we’re all still married to our first spouses.

Another (divorced) friend at church recently asked me  about our closest long-time couple friends, if there were any divorces among them. Two of my dearest girl-friends have gone through divorce, but in our core group of couple friends the answer is easy.

No.

Not one.

That same friend made the connection I hadn’t. He said, “Makes sense. You’ve surrounded yourself with like-minded people, couples in it for the long haul.”

When we started vacationing together, there were five children in the group. There are now eight—all grown-up—and four grandchildren. We were quite the crowd last week.

We had a ball catching up, eating and drinking together, playing cards. We had a ping-pong and hula-hoop forest golf tournament. We shared our most memorable stories of other vacations.

Most important, we reinforced those bonds so they’ll stick for another twenty or so years.