Of Kindred Spirits & Their Adventures

 So one of my dearest friends was in town a couple of weeks ago babysitting her cousins for a whole week. And since said cousins were in school for the better part of every day, we picked up said babysitter on several occasions that week and went gallivanting off to see what the charming city of Meridian had to offer.

We had many delightful adventures, some of which were planned, and some of which were, well, unplanned. Like having a lovely tour of nearly the entire "rather dangerous", "don't go there after dark", "Are we armed?" side of town, all in the name of attempting to locate a book nook. Yes, all of that for books. I personally am not a huge fan of reading, but when two of your most kindred spirits are both slightly attached obsessed to the point of fan-girling/hyperventilating over books, you find yourself consenting to things you never thought you would ever do. And just for the record, we were NOT lost. The GPS knew exactly where we were...

We visited a darling little coffee shop, pigged out and probably committed the sin of gluttony enjoyed ourselves in moderation at the local Baskin Robbins, and raided any and every thrift store that we could find. The book section of each thrift store was appropriately picked over by before stated book lovers, and you should've seen them when they had to leave their precious piles of books upon books to go into the dressing room to try on clothes. With deep, sincere looks in their eyes, (closely resembling the look a King would give you when he hands you the only key to his exquisite palace overflowing with gold and diamonds and Dove chocolate), they entrusted me with their books and whispered "Guard these with your life, or else." And so I did.

After her babysitting duties were over, Lana came and spent the night with us Saturday night. Rachel and I proudly introduced her to Pride and Prejudice (the movie) and we spent much of the rest of the night woefully bemoaning Mr. Collins and the real life Mr. Collinses that we've met. The rest of the night was spent gabbing and late night exercising routines (with jumping jacks interrupted by gales of laughter), story telling and future wedding planning. Long live sleepovers! :D

I somehow missed the "duckface" memo...

 And these weren't the only pictures that we took. While we were at the mall, we spotted one of those cute little photo booth things and thought "Why not?". Apparently those darn little things only have a maximum capacity of a person and a half who weigh approximately 84 pounds combined... But three squished ladies later, we fit ourselves into the thing and tried to stop laughing long enough to take a decent picture. I somehow got voted to be the lucky one who sits awkwardly on top of the other two and has their face all up in the camera. Attractive, really it is. Sigh. I'll spare y'all the gruesome details. And gruesome is right. In more than one aspect. See, it was supposed to let you choose which background you wanted for your series of pictures, and being the cheery little preachers' daughters that we are (who all hate Halloween and firmly believe it's creepy and devilish and creepy, can I get an Amen?!), planned to opt for a daisy field background or something. But that possessed piece of junk, of it's own accord, selected the Halloween background with some sort of Satanic symbol smack dab in the middle of it. Thankfully, Sharpie markers can blot out the sin of Satanic Symbols, and we laughed all the way home about our mistake.

We also had the privilege of taking Lana on her first bowling trip ever. Sadly enough, Abigail completely and mercilessly beat us without pity in almost every game we played. Okay, so it's been a while since I've pulled out the ole bowlin' ball. She didn't have to get so smart aleck-y about it! Why are some people so good at everything they try?! We tried to be happy for her. We really did. But after a while, we could only take so much losing, and started cheering when she missed a pin. Evil, I know... But somebody has to be the #1 loser, after all.

Sometimes he threw it with enough force to knock over the entire bowling alley, sometimes with just enough force to knock over a baby ant... And sometimes he kicked it. And other times he just kinda flopped it, as pictured here. Let's just say I don't think he has a professional future in bowling...

BJ looks thrilled.

Bowling Shoes. They are so hideous, so painful to look at, so terrible, yet so patriotic. So UGLY. They were so bad, in fact, that we made commitments to each other like "I won't look at your feet, if you won't look at my feet." "Deal." I'm of the opinion that whoever invented those things should be forced to wear them everywhere.

For your first time, you did a fantastic job, Lana! Even though your ball had a special and annoying desire to always be united with the left corner. ;) (Thus the exasperated hand motions)

Long live bowling and late night talks and Pride and Prejudice and everything in between! :) We had a splendid time making memories!