Lucky Girl

I’m a lucky girl. After my last woeful blog entry on Thursday my husband and baby girl were there to greet me when I came home from work on Friday - a whole day earlier than expected!! I got misty when I saw them. I was SO happy to get to see them before heading out for a much anticipated girls-weekend in Des Moines.

The Des Moines weekend had been on the books for nearly a year. It was planned WAY before Derek and Malia’s engagement as just a girl’s get way weekend, but we decided to convert the weekend into a bridal shower/bachelorette party for Malia.

We had planned the weekend to take place in Des Moines simply because it’s the mid-point for the six of us. But I’m actually pretty impressed with all the fun things Des Moines has to offer – this of course, comes from a girl who lives in Lincoln, so . . .

But I think we would have had a blast if we had met up in Podunk, IA or Onehorse, NE, because my friends are just F-U-N! I think the most laughs were just sitting on the beds in the hotel talking. Which may mean that calling our weekend a bachelorett party is a misnomer. When we were coming back to our hotel after a leisurely Italian dinner around 10 p.m. we saw another bachelorette party heading out. This group of young women had the scantily clad bride in a veil and her friends looked like call girls. What the!? Our definition of fun involved heading up to our hotel room, taking off our heels and getting into our jammies.

So, we took our sensibly-dressed selves up to our hotel room to enjoy some amazing cheese cake and wine and showered Malia with gifts. We must have been a little on the noisy side because “Hotel Management Services” came to call around 11 pm asking us to “please keep it down”. Smack dab in the middle of my “how well do you know Derek” quiz. Jeez!

We all laughed a LOT, and relished the time to go shopping without having to take a toddler potty, or eating a 4 course meal without worrying about the kid’s bedtimes. But the best part was just spending time with such a great group. These women are beautiful, talented and smart, and I’m so lucky to call them friends.

And how amazing that one of these wonderful women will soon become a member of my family. I’m a lucky girl, indeed.