Texas Girls Part III- Back to Our Old Stompin' Grounds

After driving for a million years across interminable stretches of American highway for 20 hours and crashing at Brooke and Chris's house as the sun was coming up Friday morning, Arielle and I rightly slept in until the extravagantly slothful hour of noon. Arielle poked her head out of the bed, took a quick survey of her mental and emotional health, and decided to go back to bed. I should have done the same, but I was already too overcome with the voice in my head that had started the "Days Left in Texas" countdown, so I dragged myself out of bed and attached myself to Brooke for the afternoon for errands. Our first weekend in town was the 10th Annual Spring Bash (Brooke's 28th birthday party). We've been celebrating this together since Brooke's 19th birthday, back when we were all just little nuggets in college. Our core group is about 20+ people, plus all of *their* people, plus those people's people, so Spring Bash is always a good time. Arielle and I crashed at my Dad's house Friday night after said errands, and woke up bright and early on Saturday to head back over to Brooke and Chris's house. The Bash was starting at 2 p.m., and would continue on until 2 a.m. the next morning- people trickled in and out the whole time, but altogether about 30 of us showed up to honor the last ever Spring Bash and wish Brooke a happy birthday. A good time was had by all, and there are pictures to prove it for those who may have a fuzzy memory of the night's events.

We started off with backyard games and beautiful Texas weather, which is always a good way to start a beginning of summertime party.

I can't tell you how long I had been wanting this avocado shake with bubbles. It is incredible.

 Our friend Mike, who serves in the Air Force, showed up to surprise Brooke. No one but Chris knew he was coming, so we all had a good Hallmark moment over that one. I'm being a creeper and taking pictures here. Someone has to document every aspect of our lives, right?

 Chris had grill duty. He later produced some amazing vegetable fajitas, a homemade tomatillo ranch sauce, and some incredible queso. The first half of Spring Bash was going swimmingly.

Arielle and I, soaking in the happiness of being surrounded once more by our gang of pals.

 The sun starts to set...

The game of corn hole in the backyard heats up...

and it's getting serious out there, folks.

 Beck-ay and Beck-ay, both newly banged. 

Here I was explaining to Chris the crucial information that my bangs still had cracks in them because they weren't trained yet. Seriously. I know, I'm totally scintillating.

 

 Far more interesting is the fact that Chris brewed this strawberry beer at home. He added pounds of fresh strawberries, and it smelled great. If I drank beer, I'm sure I would add "and it tastes great, too!" here. But I don't drink beer, so I'll just say that those who did said "it tastes great, too!".

The cast of characters around this table changed all night, but the good conversations were a constant. I'm not humble enough to keep from saying that I have some particularly witty friends. I really missed our silly banter, inside jokes, and stupid nicknames.

 In honor of the inaugural Spring Bash 10 years ago, an old skool game of flip cup was started.

Caleb (as Brooke says, "the prettiest girl I know), Arielle, and Travis, back together again. I spent a lot of time with these wonderful people when I came back to Dallas from Japan.

 This is what winning flip cup looks like. Pure, unadulterated childlike joy, haha.

Once we headed into nightfall, a storm started brewing, as is often bound to happen in Texas in April.

Shortly after this picture was taken, the tarp over the porch began to blow away. Since we were all wet from saving the electronics from the porch, and since the tarp was down for the count and it was 11 at night, there was really nothing left to be done.

Clearly, the most logical course of action was to make an enormous slip and slide in the back yard. So, we did. Happy birthday Beck-ay, indeed.

 J-Ben and Kate  look on, slightly amused, slightly judgmental, but eventually they took their turn. I begged off  due to photographer duties. 

Right about the time the slip and slide got old, the power went out. Here, Arielle sings a ballad from "Wicked" to express her deeply felt emotions regarding this situation.

We ended the night by candlelight, at around 3 a.m. Sunday morning. The power came on at 4 a.m., at which point I summoned a monumental amount of motivation and made myself get up from the couch so that Arielle and I could drive home and get some sort of sleep at my Dad's house, in his den, on our trusty air mattress. We had to be ready to go not too much later that day, since we both had afternoon plans with respective friends and then a planned outing to my favorite club in Dallas, The Church. All in all, going to bed at 5 a.m., again, knowing I'd get about 5 hours of sleep, again, was a price worth paying in exchange for seeing almost every single one of my friends in Dallas in one place.

This Texas trip was off to a very good start :)