THE HILLS: July 2012

So Branson's been making observations lately on the opposite sex. So far these are the things he's come up with...

After swimming lessons one day, he gets in the car and I asked him how it went and he was like, "mom, girls get really sad!" Just wait til you're a teenager, you have no idea!

We were driving in the van and totally random, Branson says, "mom, boys understand girls but girls don't understand boys". I'll remind him of this when he starts to date!

Branson was outside with my mom at my parents house and their dog's name is Jack and the neighbor dog always comes over and her name is Tika. Jack was in the trees and Branson said "Jack's in the trees because he's lost. Tika stays here because she's a girl and girls never get lost... Boys ALWAYS get lost!"

I love hearing his thoughts on girls!

How did we already get to this point?? 3 years ago we were like, "we can't believe we're actually moving to Texas" and now we can't believe that it's already over! This is really hard for us to leave. We're excited to back in Canada, and to be closer to family but we really have the most amazing friends here, we're so sad to leave them! I tried to fit in as many girls nights and farewell parties as possible before we left, but it almost made it harder because it made me realize how many great friends we have and how things will never really be the same. I have my different groups of friends, yes, I clump my friends into categories... I have my Parker friends. These are the girls that our husbands all started in the same trimester and we all moved here, not knowing anyone and we became each others family. These are the friends that we've spent our Christmas's, New Years, Easter, July 4th, Thanksgiving, every kids birthdays and everything else in between, with. These are the girls that when our husbands were in clinic 12 hours a day we would depend on for our sanity. Or when they were studying for Board Exams and were gone every weekend, we'd meet up at Ikea and let our kids play in the playplace and eat at the restaurant there on the kids eat free days. Even if we just met up at the mall play place, these were the girls you could count on that when you were feeling so overwhelmed with being a Parker widow, they were probably in the same boat. The beauty of these girls too was that all our kids are the same age... And for the most part, all boys! It's nice to have others who are as poor as you as well. Everything about life that was hard in the past 3 years, we all went through together. I'm pretty sure I'll never have friendships quite the same as I had with these girls, because they felt like my sisters when none of us had our family close. The pictures are missing a few of the girls...

April was the first of us to leave, she left in May and it was super hard to watch her go and realize how much things were about to change as we all finish up.

Nadine, Heather, Yralia, me and Shannon.

So I've also got my friends from my ward, my friends who used to be in my ward and moved to neighboring cities, and my Jill friends (the friends I'd made through one of my friends Jill, whose husband was a couple tri's ahead of us). These are the different groups of friends I tried to get in that one last girls night/lunch/playdate with. I'm sad I didn't get pictures at every outing!