Big Girls' Weekend

I’m back from New Hampshire! You know those vacations that you work up so much in your head ahead of time that you’re disappointed in the actual thing? That was not this trip. The bar was set sky-high, and the weekend was still so much better than anything we could have expected. It was perfect and magical and something I think we’ll all remember for the rest of our lives.

Even though Sarah has six kids, we only took two of them, Ella and Jacques. The 2 big boys are too old for Story Land, the baby is too little, and Luc started kindergarten yesterday and was just too freaked out over it to leave his daddy's side this weekend. So we ended up with a 1:1 adult-to-child ratio, which is just about perfect as far as I'm concerned.

There were some major milestones on this trip. In our 15+ years of friendship, Sarah and I have traveled together a lot. But it was always with my family or hers, or one of us staying at each other's house. This was the first time we planned a trip together and went, just us and the kids. Sarah's been a stay-at-home mom for a long time, and she just went back to work in the same maternity ward where she had her babies, "catching" other people's. So she got to pay for the trip with her own money, that she earned herself. I got my new car, the very first one that I picked out and paid for myself. (Ruby will be getting a whole entry on her own soon.) Sarah got the tattoo that she's been wanting for a while. Ella turned three, and the binkie fairy came during the night, to take away all her binkies and give them to the newborn babies at Mama's hospital. (I don't have any pictures of Ella blowing out candles, because she was on my lap, telling me "Me and you. Me and you will blow out the candles.) It was a big girls' weekend all around.

I am, impossibly, even more in love with my goddaughter than I was at the beginning of the weekend. She would come up to me every so often and put her nose against mine and her forehead against mine, and just nuzzle against me, loving me. Bags and bags of gold for that kid. When I sang to her, she'd put her hands on either side of my face, stare into my eyes, and just move her head back and forth to the music. She's a bundle of mush. Of course, that bundle can sometimes be wrapped up in a mighty witchy package, but what can you expect from someone who has me and Sarah as her primary female influences? One morning at breakfast she was mad at us, and she went around the table pointing at Sarah, Jacques, and I one at a time, saying, "I don't like you. And you. And you." But when I pretended to be sad, she tapped me on the arm and said, "It's okay. I like you now."

Story Land was amazing. The oldest parts of the park have been there for more than 50 years, and they're built around the nursery rhymes. Mother Goose is there, Humpty Dumpty, the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. Then you enter into Cinderella's kingdom, where Jacques got to take his picture with a REAL KNIGHT'S ARMOR. (He might have mentioned that a time or 80.) Ella had Cinderella wish her a happy birthday. She and I took a picture with that other godmother's wand. And lest you think it was all about the kids, Sarah and I did have a threesome with a giant cock.

We laughed and played and snuggled and swam, and it was the perfect ending to what has been an amazing summer. I even had some special pictures taken while Sarah was getting her tattoo. I always knew those kids were trouble.