my birthday/going away overnighter, with my coolest friends ever:

"Picnik Show"

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I have written about my Bible study before....have I mentioned that they just happen to also be my best friends?
The ones I've written so much about!?
The ones I adore, the ones I can't bear to think about being far from?

ugh.

It was FOUR of our birthdays this week and I'm leaving in a few weeks -
THIS WAS CAUSE FOR MAJOR GOING OUTAGE.

It was all mostly a surprise to me, I knew enough to be prepared and enough to guess at what we were doing but I was out of the planning loop completely (um...that's not my normal roll here people ;-)

STOP #1
Pedicures - birthday girls were all paid for.
our dinner reservation was quite a bit later so the party planners brought snacks to pedicures!
crackers, cheese, chocolate covered strawberries and sparkling cider!

SO CUTE!!!!

STOP #2
check in at the hotel in our great down-town area.
for being a mid-west town, this place has an awesome down town area!
and I would know, I've been to just a few!

STOP #3
our hotel shuttle dropped us off at BLUE, only THE best sushi place in the world - I love it!
I gorged, I'm not gonna lie.

STOP #4
Vivace is one of my fav' restaurants in town and they have their own pastry chef on staff....soooo....dessert at Vivace it was!
holy wow.

STOP #5
final destination. back to the hotel for jammies and presents and girl talk, and tears, and giggles, and sleep....oh wait, we didn't do that last one very much!

Those stinkers put together an AMAZING photo book of our 5 + years together as friends.
I was crying when I opened the box.
I could barely open the first page.....

what an amazing gift!
(funny, I had made several of them photo books too ;-)...with mixbook...theirs were smaller but some of the pages looked exactly a like...Uh hum...Melissa! Why are we surprised!? we are practically the same person...except I covet your waist size!)

We milked the free breakfast and late checkout for all it was worth and then headed back to our amazing families and husbands and babysitters (we are all military wives...what are the chances one or more husbands won't be deployed!? ZERO. Bless the babysitters who are cool with staying overnight!!!)

I cried all week putting their gifts together.
I cried for an hour the day of, I wrote them all letters for their gifts....and then I applied lots of eye cream!
I cried inside the whole night and OUTSIDE a bunch at present time.

*sigh*
what a perfect night.

soooooo LOVE my friends.

I came home, just sat with my girls for a few hours, laid us all down for nap.

they all did their normal 2 hour stint...I slept for FOUR.

and was still tired enough to go to bed at a normal time!

they wore me out - and I loved every minute of it.