Meeting Emerson Kate

I didn't take the pictures that I really should have when were were visiting college friends in DC last month, but sometiems you just get wrapped up in the moment and you want to activly participate instead of being behind a camera.

I soaked up every moment of getting some time with Emerson and her wonderful parents. One lesson I've learned is that friendships have to change. You can't live with your college roommate forever... or walk to class together and stay up late talking about what to wear to next weekend’s formals or what it will be like to hold each other's babies one day when we're real adults. Life changes so naturally friendships change, but the good ones always last. They always allow you to pick up where you left off last. Sure, there is something that you loose when you don't see each other on a day-to-day basis, but it's inevitable, it's life...and it's ok! As long as you take the time to still nourish that friendship. I hardly love anything more than being with people that I can completely and fully be 100% myself around & that's what trips like these are for! Nothing is pretend or posed...it's real friends talking about the real parts of life, the parts that make us smile from ear to ear and the parts that make feel like starting over. I'm so thankful for this weekend away & I'm even more thankful for the people I spent it with.

I'll now let the pictures do the talkin'...

"Because we had the time, because we could let conversations wind and unwind, because we could start them at dawn and pick them up again in the evening, we circled down to the places you never get to when you just see one another at weddings, giving out funny sound bytes over bites of cake. ....If you're lucky enough to have your Monica and your Sara and your Kirsten all right in your very own town, I hope you soak it up, and that you lie around in each other's backyards every Saturday afternoon or stay up late on one another's porches three nights a week. But if you're like me, and if those faces are far away, get a weekend on the calendar and get there. Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make work. There are enough long lonely days of the same old things, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you'll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends. You'll wonder why all you share is Christmas cards, and why life feels lonely and bone-dry. We were made to live connected and close, as close as we all were for those few days in Alameda, holding one another's babies, taking turns stirring whatever was on the stove. So walk across the street, or drive across town, or fly across the country, but don't let really intimate loving friendships become the last item on a long to-do list."

-Shauna Niequist Bittersweet