Yes, very good friends
The boys and I had a great time visiting Elly and her boys in Oregon City and Meghan and her three down for one day from Olympia. Elly has the picture.
We all commented that it is nice but strange that we have remained good friends over the course of moving away and having kids, even to driving 4 hours to visit, instead of drifting apart and only sending and receiving Christmas cards as happens with most college friendships. We all agreed that it is due to our similar backgrounds (we all came from different childhood places and churches, but our parents are of similar types — matter-of-fact, frank, prone to raising their voices, take life in stride, not the soft and gentle and mild type); our similar underlying beliefs and philosophies, though they manifest themselves in different practices, personalities, and styles; and we all are eager for the chance to have good, hearty, deep discussions. We all welcome such conversations and do not take anything personally, won’t get our feelings hurt, and are genuinely interested to hear others’ viewpoints. We all are in very different situations, too, so we are able to discuss topics from the same worldview but from different experiences. We spoke very little of the day-to-day, baby stories, labor stories, funny toddler happenings, all those things mothers generally and always talk about. Instead, our conversation topics included
-
1. Pride & Prejudice; Jane Austen’s style and the points she intended to make.
2. Clothes style and preferences — Meghan loves trendy clothes, Elly hates dealing with clothes, and I am just average (that’s what I like to think, anyway).
3. House styles, old vs. new houses, fixing and building houses. 4. Modesty, swimsuits, and prudery, including Meghan’s defense of nude art.
5. Communion – frequency, wine, and our children.
6. What we enjoy doing, what we see ourselves doing in 15-20 years.
7. Homeschooling vs. dayschooling at a godly school;
age-appropriate education; thoughts on methods and materials; pitfalls of homeschooling.
8. Child spacing.
9. Car seats.
10. What helps and hinders us from our housework; problem of turning the to-do list, shining sink, or clean floor into an idol.
11. Potty training.
There was more, but that is a good selection and all I can remember right now. I had a great time and it was well worth the car time.
[...] My friends Mystie and Meghan came to visit Tuesday from their respective homes in Tri-Cities and Olympia, WA. I’ve known Meghan since I was about 11, and I met Mystie at community college when I was 16. We all went to college at the University of Idaho. We got engaged our first year, married in the summer (within 3 weeks of each other), and spent our first year as young marrieds in Moscow together. We’ve all moved in different directions (literally), but we try to get together every once in a while – we shoot for after every baby! It’ll be 5 years this summer since our wedding anniversaries and we have 7 kids between the three of us! We always get a kick out of remembering how we got together for coffee and discussed our various wedding plans 5 years ago, and now when we get together we try to carry on coherent conversations in the midst of the constant toddler refereeing and diaper changing and nursing! This time we decided to try for a picture of our herd, but with one thing and another we didn’t get around to it until the kids were falling apart at bedtime. [...]