Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

We've been friends for years with the Dugas Family, since before they were actually a family! Kim, Mike and I all worked for the same company and then Paul joined the crew when we started dating. You worry when you starting dating someone if he'll fit in with your "people". Thankfully, mine was a perfect match. 

The four of us have been through so much ... went to each other's weddings, welcomed our babies, said good-bye to parents, lost jobs, moved into new houses, new jobs and lots of Sunday night bowling. For a long time, too long, Kim and I have been talking about taking a joint trip. We have all these great ideas, we make really abstract plans and well .. we never actually go anywhere. It isn't that we don't want to .. we just get busy!

Last summer, our family was stunned by the sudden loss of someone so very special to us. She was 17 and a literal ray of sunshine. She brought warmth and pure joy into our home when she was here. Not having her physical presence in our lives anymore, having her taken from us so unexpectedly .. it left me wondering if I told her everything I should have told her. Did she know that I loved her smile? Did she know that every time I passed a Jeep in our neighborhood, I looked for her? That I loved when she asked us to give her a ride home from work? 

We started back to bowling in late August and Kim and started talking about all the fun stuff we'd been doing. I told her that Paul and I were done "talking" and we pledged to start "doing" and that we needed to plan a trip, just a weekend even, but we needed to do it. 

Before long, we had a place, a weekend and reservations. Last Friday, we loaded up the Pathfinder and headed for Portsmouth, NH. The Dugas Family bringing up the rear.  We had adjoining rooms in a hotel with a heated pool. We stayed up late and ate too much junk food, we explored a science center, downtown and skated on an outdoor rink. We had hot chocolate, margaritas, hard cider and children's wine. We played Left-right-center in the hotel lobby by the fireplace. We had an AMAZING time!

There were moments last weekend that I was moved to tears, my heart was so full of gratitude. We are so lucky to have this relationship with this family. I was sorry that we had waited so long.