Old Friends Are The Best Friends

Vacation is over and all our company left this morning. Now it is time to get back to normal life again, whatever that means. 🙂

I have so much good stuff to share with you, but as you all know, I like to pace it out a bit, and keep your interest peaked rather than bombard you with a blasting of posts. I will come back to my Cozumel trip later, but I would rather share our adventures from the weekend now.

I had three of my besties from junior high school and high school over for a little, mini reunion. Priscilla, you all know. She only lives 10 minutes away from me, here in Colorado. But Leslie and Andrea are new to you. We have all remained very close throughout the years, and we just picked up right where we left off. Andrea and Leslie both came in from Southern California. We also included mine and Priscilla’s friend Laura for the adventures. She was an honorary “Marshallite” for this weekend.

Yes, we have all been around the sun a few times, but I think we have all aged well, like a good bottle of wine. 🙂 We were celebrating both Leslie’s and Priscilla’s birthdays.

The Marshallites: Andrea, Jeanne, Priscilla, Leslie

Andrea flew in on Thursday, and as soon as we picked her up from the airport, Larry and I took her to our favorite local winery, InVINtions. A Toast to InVINtions! After doing some tastings, we came home for beef stroganoff, that was requested by Andrea for dinner.

For the big birthday bash, I prepared a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean feast, with Moroccan spiced lamb and chicken as the main focus. Before the lamb and chicken though, we started off with some dolmas, a mixture of olives, and pita bread and hummus. Then I added in some homemade falafels Falafels and Tahini Sauce, a roasted vegetable salad with a rosemary vinaigrette Roasted Pepper and Mushroom Salad with Rosemary Vinaigrette, couscous, and baklava and date and coconut squares for dessert. I do need to correct this however. I should say I INTENDED to make couscous for dinner, but I got a little distracted, and it never made it to the dinner table this night. And Laura must have thought we were all going to starve, so she brought a Capresi salad over as well.

I did not make either the baklava or the coconut and date squares this time around. Can I make baklava? Yes, but why should I when the baklava from Mumtaz is already perfectly made and is so excellent! 🙂 Mediterranean Mumtaz

After very full tummies, we all sat around and reminisced and visited for the rest of the evening, as well as for the rest of the weekend. It was so good catching up with some of my oldest and dearest friends. Sadly, we all lead very busy lives, and we just don’t get a chance to all gather together very often. They are so special to me in so many ways. We all share a lot of happy and fun memories together. This is what the good life is all about. Love you Girls! 🙂