Howdy

Interwebs! It's been a week again and I'm not sure why this keeps happening. Summer is admittedly rough- I work and do all the things until JP comes home about 7:15, run off to barre or help get everyone in bed, get home at 8:45, try to answer a few emails, straighten up the house, prep for the next day, help JP with his emails and business work, sometimes watch a little TV or read some of my book and then it's 11:45 p.m. and I'm mad we're going to bed so late AGAIN and then the next day it starts over. But the winds, they are a-changing. The big pool is drained and JP's pool manager and board member duties are on hold until April! He has mornings free to do swim school work! Everything is SO MUCH EASIER when fall comes. As a swim school wife, it's my new favorite season.

Flowers and my favorite donut hand-delivered byJP on our anniversary; he really gets me

Also helping to free up my evenings- my yoga studio has created three new 6:15 a.m. barre classes because I kept asking for them and I am going! I don't know that anything sums up the change in me over the last 6 months quite like that sentence. "My yoga studio" - oh yes, I have one - "6:15 a.m. barre class" - YES! - "I kept asking for them" - early enough to be done before work and won't interrupt our family evenings and post-parental-duty glass of wine - "and I am going!" - I haven't missed one yet! Even though I haven't been getting any sleep and my eyes hurt and I get flashbacks to morning swim practice, I am there, in the studio by 6:15 and I LOVE IT. I love it. We always end with some power yoga, stretching, and a moment where you're standing on your mat in mountain pose, watching the sun rise through the studio windows, floating your arms down to prayer, thumbs to heart-center, with "a first big step forward into your day, letting go of all that does not serve you." It probably sounds cheesy reading it here, but I leave feeling lighter. And on a more superficial note, I am actually lighter. The lightest I've ever weighed and suddenly a full pants size smaller. Peace is found at the barre, even if you suddenly don't have any pants.

Speaking of good stuff- two of my best friends from law school visited me in fort worth this weekend! Allison, previously of NYC and currently in Hong Kong, and K, previously of Chicago and currently in Los Angeles. Visiting me, in exotic Fort Worth. And we had SO much fun. Or I did, anyway, but I think I can speak for them too.

Alli flew in on Thursday night and I took her to barre with me on Friday morning, where my super fit yogi friend confirmed that, "this is really hard!", and then we morphed into ladies who lunch. To show I meant business, I even blew out my hair before leaving the house. We ate amongst many other ladies of leisure and then I suggested we stop in a store or two in our outdoor fancy shopping village next to the lunch place. Three hours later we were heading into our fourth store and I was holding three bags and making Alli swear not to let me buy anything else. It's just, everything fit so well! And I would say I wanted some specific thing and it would appear in the next store. On sale. Miracles like that need to be seized.

We picked K up at the airport in the evening and then headed to the home of my favorite margarita in Fort Worth- Yucatan Taco Stand. Don't be fooled, it's an actual restaurant, and its margaritas and nachos cannot be beat. Then we walked to Live Oak Music Lounge and sat on the roof of a building under a giant tree with little white lights and listened to music, drank more tequila, and talked until we were hoarse. It was law school without the school and with more money, wisdom, and moderation in drinking. God I've missed them.

On Saturday I woke up early to Cora screaming in joy from my closet (my friends were staying in her room), so I got up and baked them poppyseed bread. We're basically a bed and breakfast. There was a trip to the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, lunch at my favorite lunch place (Lili's Bistro; get the gorgonzola fries), and we got bikinis on, lounge floats blown up, and a pitcher of margaritas ready a whole five minutes before a giant thunderstorm blew in and sent us all inside to drink the margaritas on the couch. The trials we bear.

It continued pouring up to dinner, so we switched plans to an indoor place near Sundance Square, hoping the rain would end when we finished. It did not, so, tequila'd out for the first time in my life, I googled "Fort Worth wine bar" and we found our way to Times Ten in the W. 7th district and it was awesome. Fellow Fort Worthians, you must go. We have a winery! In Fort Worth! And they buy their grapes from Napa, so it's actually really good!

We tasted many, chatted more, and left late. I crawled in bed at 12:45 and Cora woke me up at 6 with her happy screams (we had her pack 'n play in the closet and I think she really likes shoes), so it was another throwback to the law school with Landon. So special, but made better with fancy buffet brunch, mimosas, the Fort Worth Water Gardens, a non-stormy swim in the pool.

I drove them to the airport Sunday afternoon, the kids nearly as sad to see them go as I was. Claire was particularly delighted with all the grown-up girls in the house and anytime I asked JP to get a picture of "the ladies," Claire would race across the pool to get in it. Because, duh, I meant her too.

So now it's just the five of us in our house and it feels so small and margarita-less. I was so blessed in my law school classmates and friends. I wouldn't have survived 3L year without every one of them and beyond the true and deep friendship I share with my close set, there's just a wonderful camaraderie and openness that exists between us. We're all smart, ambitious women in demanding, high-paying jobs (well, not so much me these days) and we can talk about the unique challenges and joys that come along with that. They are a blessing to me, and though I always miss them, thanks to blogs, facebook, email, texting, and their willingness to take transcontinental (and transpacific!) flights, the distance doesn't feel as far as it could, and anytime we get together, it's like no time has passed at all. We're spread out between LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, NYC, and Hong Kong, but Alli is generously giving us a big reunion by arranging to get married in NYC next year and then we'll have to plan to go somewhere awesome in 2016. Though it's going to be hard to be The Fort. It comes with poppyseed bread.

In other things you've missed, Cora is THISCLOSE to walking. She's taken a few steps, but is too distracted by her newfound ability to scream happy screams in different octaves and she tried waffles for the first time on Sunday and I think she's STILL celebrating that.

Landon and Claire are doing great, JP is 50% more available to me on nights and weekends, and we're meeting with the cabinetmaker in the morning to plan out the final details of our kitchen project before walls come tumbling down in two weeks. So, more adventures are coming and I plan to be much better about blogging them. At the very least, there will be some creative menu posts while our kitchen is under construction.