Five Minute Friday: "Visits"

Visits.

My childhood is a mosaic of memories.  I look back to my years growing up and I see many different people, places and events squished together to form one solid masterpiece.  Some of the panes of glass shimmer  and others are a foggy gray, but when displayed as a whole, the picture is breathtaking.

Since my family moved around as I grew up, from city to city, and at times, state to state... visits were a highlight of my life, glitzy pieces to my mosaic.  Visits to see my grandparents, visits from old friends and visits to new friends... The rise of anticipation as we awaited to see the one we loved, it never grew  dull.  I loved it then.  I love it more today.

This summer one of my dearest friends came for a quick visit.  An evening together, children, husbands, chaos... all of it!

We arranged for her family to meet at our home and then we would go eat a kid friendly dinner at a loud mexican food restaurant down the street.  Perfecto!  With enough tortillas and cheese sauce and mexican Cokes, we could easily distract 6 kids for 1 good conversation?! Right?!

Of course, after our husbands chatted upon arriving at our home, they changed our well-thought-through plans and decided to adventure eat... with 6 children (under five).

Being the darling submitting wives that we are, we responded with "Whatever pleases you husband, dearest...".  In actuality we did put up a fight, but were quickly out ruled.

So, we packed our children into our people movers and headed to the south side of OKC to "adventure" eat...eventually ending up at Taco San Pedro (the very best Mexican food in Oklahoma City) along with the rest of the gun toting, drug selling, gang banging population of the "souuuth siiide".  We like to keep it real, people.


Not only did the kids spill drinks, throw chips and take 8 trips to the restroom, the air conditioner was broken on the 100 degree July afternoon we ventured south for a street taco.  Much more memorable than our quiet evening planned at our previously picked establishment, let me tell you.

But, all of those small details are eclipsed by this picture that we were able to snap...

First of all do you see all 6 children are sitting in a row, looking straight (kinda)!!  What an accomplishment!

But, the funniest detail of this photo is that while we were sitting on this table and our husbands were digging around in our souped up minivan and SUV for their ipads and digital cameras... Chandra and I were having to wrangle the kids from interfering with a drug deal on the side of the building and turning away homeless people because all I had in my wallet was "chuckee cheese tokens"!!!!!

"I am sorry sir, all I seem to have is 4 chuckee cheese tokens.  You can have them if you want?"

I just love this picture though, simply because when my friendship with Chandra started, we each had one child... and now between the two of us, we have 6!!  We have walked with each other through deeper waters than a roughed up homeless man and a little "dive" eating is nothing for this pair of women!!


This was one of my very favorite visits this summer.  So many laughs and though our time together is short and rare, it is sweet as honey for this dry thirsty soul.  


You can see my post linked up to Lisa-Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday post today!

Every Friday Lisa posts a word to be used as a subject that we can then take five minutes to write about, unedited, without thinking, stopping when the five minutes is up.

This was my "Five Minutes" today.