Sentimental Sunday

This week's Sentimental Sunday is a tribute to good friends. We have been friends with the Ns and the Rs since 1997 when our oldest children were all in Kindergarten together in AZ. Over the next four years M, B and I formed a wonderful friendship as did our children and our husbands. It was wonderful, especially since we were all living away from our families. We spent four years making wonderful memories together.

Then in 2001, quite by coincidence, both B and I moved back to RI. I say "back to RI", because I am from RI and B, who is from CT, had previously lived in RI for several years (though by the time she was in RI, I was already in hell AZ). Needless to say, this was not good news for M. It didn't help that B and I both moved on the exact say day! Again, completely by coincidence. A few months after we moved, M came to RI to visit. She fell in love with the place. The following summer the whole family visited and the year after that the Ns moved to RI as well!!! Isn't that just amazing? B, M and I have now been friends for 12 years. Our oldest children, who brought us all together in Kindergarten, are about to become seniors! Unbelievable. And for all these years, M, B and I have been there for each other. We've shared triumphs, sadness, joy and heartache. And lots of laughs.

One year M presented B and I each with a framed photograph of 6 Adirondack chairs placed in the sand facing the ocean. She said that those chairs represented the six of us (M, B, me and our husbands) and how someday when we all retire we will occupy those chairs. Well, we didn't have to wait that long. In 2005, our three families vacationed at a lake in New Hampshire. There just happened to be a bunch of Adirondack chairs there. We arranged them in the sand, we each took a seat and one of the kids snapped our picture from the back. (I'm the second one from the left). I love this picture. And I love all the people in it.