FRIENDS

Friendship is an important thing, thank you Captain Obvious, I know. However, no one told me how to go about maintaining and nurturing my friendships when I got married. The first year of Dave and my marriage was easier for my friendships because he was deployed and I counted on and needed them so much more than normal. But now he's back and we live in Maryland, 45 minutes away from everyone and I'm having a difficult time finding a working balance.
My number one priority is Dave, and I think that's how it should be. Although I see him every single day I don't feel like we get much quality time during week nights. With his job he comes home late, we make and eat dinner, and pretty much go to bed. I live for the weekends when we can get out of the house, do some fun things, and really spend quality time together. So the issue I run into is that I don't want to make time for anyone else on the weekends because I consider it Dave and me time. It's a different phase of life as I'm the only married one in the group of friends in this area. So Monday we started a monthly girls night. It's a good way for us all to get together and catch up since it seems like it's so hard to do with every one's schedules. 

We started our monthly girls night at my place and instead of me worrying about cooking a full meal for everyone after a long day at work I decided to just do appetizers. Everyone pitched in and brought some yummy stuff.

On the line up was hummus and veggies, hot buffalo strips, cupcakes, pizza rolls, world dad's famous crab dip, and a pear salad that was delicious.  The girls traveling from VA by metro and car brought chips, dip, and cheese and crackers. Easy to transport but so good.

It was great to spend quality time just hanging out and munching and I hope next time we can make it work better for every one's schedules. And I completely forgot to take a picture of the girls, so definitely next time! Thanks for coming guys, it's always good to see you.