krr & brr

What's great about some best friends is that eight months can go by without seeing them, but when you're finally reunited it's as if you were never apart. This was exactly the circumstance when I picked up Kristen from her mom's house last Thursday evening. Charlie came along for the ride of course. She adores Kristen, so she gave her tons of kisses and left lots of prickly, white hairs on her clothes. I'm sure she just loved that. The car ride to my place was full of catch-up and laughter. We quickly got ready and took our trusty light rail to Mill Avenue, our old stomping ground. We visited our favorite places, Chronic Cantina and ZUMA, saw old friends, drank our familiar drinks, and danced some embarrassing dance moves. Sprinkler, anyone?

The next night we took on Scottsdale (after a what-to-wear fashion crisis) by starting with a delicious dinner at Culinary Dropout. Their blueberry mojitos were delicious, along with all our entrees. We ate short rib pasta, a havarti cheeseburger, and some gnocchi. YUM! With full bellies we met the rest of the girls at one of our favorite place, Firehouse. There were a ton of us ladies! At 1 AM, Kristen and I decided it was time to head home to Tempe, but randomly chose to make one last stop at Mill Avenue. Good thing we did. We saw our favorite bar tenders at ZUMA and danced like never before. Thank you, Tommy and Mike for always treating us like queens. A pizza from Hungry Howies ended our night!

On Saturday we went to our favorite restaurant, Pita Jungle. We didn't even have to look at the menu. Hummus Trio and Chicken Pasta Salad, please. It was delicious, and tasted even better when it was shared with familiar company. We followed up our meal with the movie, Friends with Benefits. We giggled the whole time, and I may have developed a tiny crush on Justin Timberlake. I know, I know. I am a bit late in the game! Later that night, we headed out to Mill Avenue (sheesh, we live there!) and continued our previous shenanigans. Dancing! Dancing! Dancing! We busted out the sprinkler (yet again), the shopping cart, the running man, and didn't care who was watching. Why would we want to be the girls taking ourselves too seriously out on the dance floor. Whatever that girl is doing isn't even dancing in my opinion. We ended the night with a great deal of laughter up at Stephanie's apartment. Who knew Google could provide us with so much comedy? I do recall attempting the Dirty Dancing jump with Stephanie, which was an epic fail. Darn.

Sunday was teary-eyed day. Saying goodbye is never easy, but all good things must come to an end. After a long hug, and yet another one, I said goodbye to my best friend...

Alas, someone, somewhere didn't feel that we had just enough time together. Her flight got delayed for a couple hours, so I booked it back to the airport to soak up any time I had left. The second goodbye seemed a bit harder. You'd think it would get easy the second time around! I definitely shed a few tears on my drive home, but they were worth all the smiles I got out of this weekend. I can't wait for our next reunion.