Surprise!

I love surprises.  When people say they hate surprises, I really, truly, deep down judge them and believe that they are not human.  Ok, maybe not that extreme, but close.  I apologize if this is you...but I just don't know how you can't love surprises.  And I love being the orchestrator of surprises just as much as, if not more than, receiving them.  So when my friend/neighbor/college roommate, Holly's, birthday was looming, I couldn't help but get the wheels turning on a devious surprise for her birthday.

During my junior and senior years of college, I lived with three other girls in apartments at Furman.  Holly and Abbey were two of those roommates for both years.  We now know that a handful of our OTHER friends at that time were skeptical of the three of us living together.  We are all three very different, yet all very strong-willed individuals.  I honestly think that some people who ran in our circle of friends were a little afraid that Furman Housing would be cleaning up the tragic remains of an apartment that had fallen victim to end-all be-all of girl fights.  Wrong.

Fast forward x number of years.  (We're all 30 now, let's leave it at that.  Some numbers are upsetting to someone who thinks she graduated from high school "just a few years ago.")  I orchestrated a surprise visit from Abbey this past weekend for Holly's birthday.  Of the three of us, Abbey is the most inaccessible for a couple reasons: she has a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old (the latter of which is becoming more and more hell on wheels with each passing day), and she lives in Jacksonville.  I don't blame her for being physically inaccessible.  If I were in her shoes, my friends would seriously begin to wonder if Russell had dumped my body somewhere.  Abbey keeps in touch via blog, email, text, etc. much better than I would.  ANYWAY, the timing was just perfect, and Abbey drove up to Greenville on Saturday.  Holly and her husband met me, Russell, and Emma at dinner...and SURPRISE!! 

We all had such a delightful time with Abbey this weekend, and Abbey is Emma's new best friend.  Seriously.  She fell in love with Abbey...and why wouldn't she?  When my mom came to pick up Emma Monday morning, Abbey was still at our house.  My mom and Emma were loving on each other as they always do on Monday mornings after a weekend away from each other when Emma turned away from my mom and reached for Abbey.  Dogs and babies have a sixth sense about who the good people are.  And Lola loved Abbey, too.

Emma was feeling much more like herself this weekend, and she slept much better with her new BiPAP mask.  However, the mask is very prone to leaking because the part that covers her nose is just too big.  So last night we went back to the old mask because the little knot on her forehead had gone down.  I think we're going to have to alternate masks from now on.  Sigh.  Nothing's easy.

A look back at last year:  June 6, 2010

I leave you with a video of Emma cracking up with me fake-dropping and actually dropping the pendant on my necklace.  I knew that if I broke it, it wouldn't matter - it was worth the gut chuckles.  Emma laughs like adults do when they get REALLY tickled - you know, the laughs that are so intense that you don't even make any noise.  So make sure you turn up your sound.