Erin & The Kerries/Carys/Karrys

I'm fond of using the phrase "forever people" to refer to those friends I have (family members, you're automatically included as "forever people" - because of your general amazingness, not through any bloodline obligations or anything) that I know I'll have...well, forever. I had a fortuitous meeting with two of these forever people (although we certainly didn't know it at the time) circa August 1993, fluorescent-lit classroom, middle school across the street from a cattle pasture. Yes, you read that last part correctly. Bonds were formed, many sleepovers were had, and Kerry, Carrie and I have been fantastic friends, sharing in all of those life experiences along the way, for the last...oh, holy smack...sixteen years or so. Oh, and blog post title? I think at one of the aforementioned sleepovers we had the brilliant idea to form a girl band and take the world by storm - I mean, that's the perfect name for our group, which was always much easier to work with orally than to spell out.

It was definitely time for an Erin & The Kerries (for my sanity, we're going to stick with that spelling for now) reunion, so Kerry made a trip into DC last Thursday night for a little quality time here in my city before we made the trip up to NYC to check in with Carrie and her boys. So, so good to spend time with Kerry and catch up over Thai food, wine, amazing chocolate dessert goodness, and RFD's overwhelming beer selection. We stayed up late talking and slept in, which is definitely in tune with my body's natural schedule, then did a little DC exploring over on the national mall with some time in the Natural History museum (shiny things! outer space stuff! rocks! ocean craziness!) and then lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian (which I've already raved about before - they really do have an amazing selection of food) before grabbing dinner provisions from Chop't and making our way to our bus to NYC.

Yup, the bus. Texas certainly doesn't have competitive bus service between Dallas and Austin and Houston and San Antonio, so this is a little bit of a foreign concept to my new-ish East Coast self, but up here it's a perfectly common thing to find yourself on BoltBus or Megabus or one of the many other service providers who run regular routes between DC, NYC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and plenty more of these East Coast destinations that are really not all that far from one another. We opted for BoltBus on this trip, and while we did initially have some concerns about the potential smelliness of the gentleman seated directly in front of us, the ride was perfectly pleasant...albeit a little lengthy given the rush hour traffic getting out of DC. I'll take the traffic, though - it's hard to argue with the bus when it costs about 1/4 as much as the train.

So we made it to New York! Quality time and several tasty takeout meals were shared with Carrie, Jason, and the latest addition to the family, this extremely cute little guy who is all worn out from the big move over the weekend:

It was so great to see these girls (and guys! used to be "guy," but the little one up there moves them into plural territory) and catch up on life and spend some quality time together, even if it did involve squashing a few new apartment bugs.

Kerry, I hope that you've figured out how to follow my blog so you can actually see the glowing review I've given you in the preceding paragraphs. Oh, and there is precisely one picture of the three of us from last weekend...I'm counting on your camera to come through for us.