five finds friday. snow cream. snow tubing. London’s cute hair and laughter from junior high.

But the time just goes by so fast even when the days are slow or the world is weird.

funny

Last weekend my friend Sara and her family stopped by for a Sunday visit as they were driving through town.

It was all sorts of delightful and we had such a lovely time catching up and chatting and enjoying one another’s company, something we’ve been doing for the past THIRTY-FIVE years.

That number makes me both laugh and cry.

Who are we? How can we be so old?

But what really made us laugh was pulling the boxes out of the attic and rifling through the memories I have hoarded for all those years. Letters. Notes. Diaries. Report cards. Junior high obsessions. Photos of ludicrously rotten hairstyles. Thousands and thousands of words written down between the both of us over the years.

We read them out loud – the note from my high school biology teacher that said, “Lacey has lost all interest in Biology.” The love letters from high school boyfriends and the books we created where we predicted our future lives and our children and our jobs.

Oh goodness, the decisions we felt were life-altering, the drama we drummed up and the stories we lived through together.

We laughed until the tears slid down our forty-seven-year-old cheeks.

fashionable

I don’t think anyone wears regular clothes any longer.

I don’t know what fashionable means.

I think we’re all wearing leggings and sweatshirts and hair piled up and what difference does ANY of it make any longer?

But my London just had her first experience with hair dye and a giant change in hairstyle.

She’s currently the most fashionable one among us, I guess.

She sure is cute.

flavorful

Sure, I get teased about it, but a few jokes won’t ever make me stop loving Snow Cream.

It’s rare and it’s delicious. It never feels like a winter if I don’t get to make at least one batch.

If it snows, I’ll make as many bowls as possible.

People have various methods and recipes but mine looks little like this:

• Gather a big bowl of fresh snow. (You can set out the bowl as the snow starts and also gather it from the tops of clean spaces where it’s piled up.)
• Sprinkle a half cup or so of sugar across the snow.
• A generous teaspoon of vanilla. (I never measure – I just splash it on.)
• About half of a can of evaporated milk.
• Stir until it reaches a happy slushy texture.

See? My directions are pretty vague and I just mostly do this from memory each year.

When we travel out west and know that there’s a chance snow will still be found, I pack snow cream supplies – just in case. (This is true.)

feels

Last week (or sometime in the relatively recent past – the days are actually blurring one into another) I spontaneously convinced a few friends to drive to the next state and to go tubing together.

The tubing hill was pretty much in someone’s yard and it was just a homemade, one hill, sort of spot. But you know what, it was all kinds of perfect.

We brought Maddox along, who had the best day ever and fit right in, and we just laughed and made up contests and ended up eating dinner at Cracker Barrel with like two other people and it was just what I needed.

I needed fun and I needed laughter and I needed nonsense and a big dose of friends and a shot of my kids laughing and the sight of snow.

faithful

Church has been anything but regular for a good long while.

Off and on the kids and I have been watching some sermon series recommended to us.

This sermon by Michael Todd was so compelling and engaging and when it was over Bergen couldn’t believe we had sat there for an hour and a half.

It’s that good.

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