Some Are Silver and the Others Gold

Friends are such a blessing.  I have been lucky enough to have lots of friends in my lifetime.  Some I keep in touch with still, while others have come and gone. But regardless of their amount of interaction in my

current life, I appreciate the ways they helped to shape who I have become.

This weekend we had the great fortune of spending an evening with one of Troy's good friends, Evan.  We realized that they have been friends for almost 10 years now.  Time spent with Evan is always enjoyable.  During the course of our conversation we talked about getting older and feeling like our friendships are more precious to us and how we feel the need to be better friends, so to speak.

I hope that my kids grow up to understand the importance of making good friends and understand the work that it takes to keep those friends.  Currently Orry is my only kid that is really old enough to "have friends".  He's had a friend before, but something about this is different.  He still doesn't get the concept 100%.  He seems to think that he can only have one at a time, for instance.  So today we sailed into uncharted waters.  We took Orry's "one friend" with us on our family outing to HMNS Sugar Land.

Ezy is a friend that Orry met at church.  They got to know each other on Wednesdays, when I drop the kids of at the church while I enjoy some crafting and adult conversation in the form of a women's circle that makes crafts for a yearly church bazaar.  This was the first time that we've taken another child along with us for a fun day.

They had a great time.  Of course we knew they would since it was a free dinosaur event...  They enjoyed joking with each other in the car and joking with each other during lunch.  They searched for fossils together and watched a show in the planetarium.  They found fossilized sharks teeth and got some cool dinosaur tattoos.  And on the way home they joked some more and wondered about the next time they could play together.

I really had the feeling of things coming full circle.  Twenty-three years ago, I'm sure that my mom was listening to Laura and me have similar silly chats in the back of the van.  And I wondered if this friendship they are forming will last a lifetime, as Laura and mine has.  Of course there is no way of telling what the future holds for our families.  In the meantime, though, I hope that I can encourage Orry to be the best friend that he can be.  I hope I can teach him the importance of listening, sharing, and caring.  I hope that I can impress upon him the fact that friends are worth all the work that it takes to have a good relationship.

I am baffled by how complex things become the further we travel down this road that is parenthood.  These complexities also offer a certain richness to the experience, though.  They offer a chance to evaluate the things we find to be important in life.  We also get a glimpse into how lives and personalities develop slowly over time through many experiences and influences.  It is an exciting journey so far and I can't wait to see where this road takes me.

And for your enjoyment, a little video that pretty much sums up why Orry and Ezy make such good friends.