Make new friends, but keep the old!

Since moving to California, we have made many fun new friends, but we still miss the friends we left behind when we left college and also when we left Virginia. I was lucky enough to get to see a dear friend from my days back at good ol' St. Thomas More in Arlington, VA this past week. She and her husband and daughter were visiting family in California and were passing through our general area. She wondered if they might make a stop to see us, and I was more than excited. Our new abode is a bit "off the beaten path" so we don't usually have visitors just dropping by. Especially not from the other coast.

My friend, Karen, worked in a little room that apparently was the enormous "closet" to my classroom the year before I got there. The summer before I arrived, they transformed the closet into a resource room where Karen works. I was in a corner of the building where there were no other actual classrooms. I was next door to the computer room and the resource "closet" and across from the library. Karen, Sarah, MaryAnne, and Marie were my little basement family and I loved it that way. We had our own little corner and generally a lot of nice quietness (unless my third graders were acting up, of course!).

Kayla especially enjoyed the visit with "mommy's friends" as she referred to them. Karen's college age daughter, Sarah, was a natural with kids and became fast friends with Kayla when she allowed Kayla to pick out nail polish colors and when she agreed to read books to her. Sarah, I still think you should transfer to a school that is closer to us...
Elise gave out lots of smiles, but all those pictures were taken on Karen's camera and not mine...

We had a wonderful time and were so happy to see a St. Thomas More face all the way on the left coast!