And so it goes

I remember being in my teenage years and flipping through an old photo album belonging to my parents. The pages were filled of pictures from parties they had as a young married couple: Halloween parties, Christmas parties and parties just to have parties. There were so many people in the pictures I didn't recognize. I asked my mom and dad who all these nameless people were. They thoughtfully named off so and so, and started telling funny stories from the party where the picture was taken. There were so many names that I hadn't heard before. I asked what had happened to all of these people. Why had I not met any of them?

My mom said something profound to me that day. It was something that in your teenage years makes absolutely no sense, but to someone in their thirties, it rings very true.

"These are the people we used to do everything with, every weekend of every month...and then we all started having kids."

Mike and I were in the car today on our way back from my chiropractor appointment. We were talking about all of our little adventures and how we usually ended up at the bar where Deuce was the DJ. I laughed as I said "And remember all the times we'd go to the Sand Bar with Mitch and Jen after bar close and Mitch and I would nap on the way to Wisconsin?". It's funny how one memory can spur so many others. It was in the midst of the conversation with Mike that I remembered what my mom said so many years ago.

Our last year in Minneapolis really mirrored the idea of "...then we all started having kids." We found overselves meeting fantastic new people through school and dance and felt ourself drifting further from the friends of our youth. The friends of our youth started to move in different directions with their families and getting together on the weekend wasn't as easy as making the Friday night phone call. It now required weeks of scheduling around dance, basketball, karate and swimming lessons. It didn't mean we loved our friends any less, it just meant that all of our priorites had changed, and the main priority for all of us now were our kids.