Girls Just Wanna Have Fun...

I remember when my best friends (Erin, Mary, Jenny, Ange) and I were growing up (junior high school days) we would take endless pictures of our crazy faces. I know every one of my girlfriends' crazy faces by heart. And I love that we can all be so silly and laugh at each other still, to this day.

We get together at least once a year for a weekend of gossiping, crafting, going out, and making silly faces while taking pictures. I vividly remember visiting Ange in California in 2005. We visited her older sister Paula (who is the queen of silly faces and taught us most of what we know) and met her husband and kids. We sat down for dinner with her and I'll never forget how fun it was. Dinner ended with everyone showing their silly faces like they were sharing what they did at school that day. I laughed so hard that I made a mental note to teach my future children this very dinner routine (I had just gone through a pretty horrendous miscarriage, so the laughter was much needed, maybe that's why it stood out so much). Think all of this is on my brain because we are in the middle of planning our next visit/girls' weekend and I have them all on my mind.

 This is a classic - was taken under the (closed) bed of Dino's truck sometime in 2005? But it clearly shows you how silly we get. Pretty sure we did the splits outside of the bar we were at this night, just before we hopped into the truck. 

 Same weekend, showing support for our favorite singer, Jen

 2006 with Jen

 Erin's Bachelorette party 2006

 Erin's wedding weekend in Vegas 2006

 Drag show in Chicago 2007

 The girls surprised me for my 30th birthday party in 2007 (I was 5 weeks prego with Iz here)

 Celebrating my baby shower at the lake in 2007

 Visiting Indy 2008

 The girls supporting me at a half marathon in 2010

 Go Cubs Go 2010

 Erin ran the last few miles of the Ch.icago Marathon 2010 with me

 Another Indy visit 2011

 Epic

 Given the amount of silliness I grew up with in these girls, I wanted to make sure to pass that quality on to my own girls. So I was tickled to see all the pictures the nanny took with the girls over the summer:

 Making faces with Nanny Natalie is second nature to them, and I freaking love it.

 And I've carried on the tradition of making funny faces at all times at home. Sure, we also talk about our favorite part of our day and what we did at school. However, we also share our favorite funny faces. "Oooh, that's a good one!" is said a lot in our house. Laney will bust out a silly face at any given moment and one of us is sure to comment on how awesome it is. We nurture silly in our house. Here's a few:

I'm so thankful for my girlfriends that I grew up with...for MANY reasons. But one of my favorite things my girlfriends taught me was how to have fun.