family time.

As always, it's so wonderful to see my family and my childhood friends (who are like family!). But it's so tough b/c it never feels like enough time and I'm always trying to see so many people as much as I can that it gets very exhausting. I miss the times when I was living in the city and could just head out to the burbs for a relaxing weekend "away" and hang with my family that way. Of course the majority of what made that so relaxing and special was my mom, she just made everything perfect. God i miss her. It's just so, so hard to go back and not have her there.

But none the less, there are still many people there that I do love very, very much--especially all the little people, my nieces and nephews. And one not so little anymore--I can't believe Erin is 21! The celebrations continued over the weekend--we had a nice party at Shawn's house on Sat night. Great food (of course, my bro learned from the best--Mom!), a great video compliments of Margaret, good music and of course cocktails. It was a great night.

Friday night I got to have dinner and drinks w/ my gals from high school--all busy moms now but it was great to see their kids (or most of them, missed johannas :( and get to hear all the latest in everyone's lives. And on Saturday I got to squeeze in a quick lunch w/ Chrissie, my college roomie. It was so wonderful to see her and hear how well she is doing, that made me happy.

So all in all for a quick 3 day trip I fit a lot in. I even got to have a quick coffee and snack w/ my aunt esther and catch up w/ her and then spend sunday with my uncle sherb and aunt diane. that was a special day--one that will get its own blog post :)

I always know how happy I am somewhere when I get to get away from day-to-day life and then I gauge how excited I am to return to my life. And after this weekend away I felt truly excited to get back to LA. It feels like home now, each day I feel i'm building more and more of my life here and that truly makes me happy. That's what I came here to do so it's reassuring to truly feel happy about that each day. And honestly, without my mom/best friend back home, it's just not at all the same and in many ways almost too difficult to imagine living there again :( But we'll see, ya never know what life has in store and all these little munchkins sure make it tough to stay away for long.

So enjoy the pics and seeing all the kids...man i love them. And hey, thanks for reading :)