Holiday Road Continues

So our holiday road took us took us across the prairie to Saskatchewan. Since I was driving I didn't take any pictures along the way but I soaked up all the images of old barns and small town churches with beautiful steeples that have me intrigued by the amount of detail they put into building design when they likely had no access to modern day power tools.  The vast fields of wheat and canola, grain elevators inscribed with town names and the endless horizon led us to our home away from home...the hometown of my BFF.

We celebrated my BFF's fifteenth wedding anniversary and we marked this milestone by releasing lanterns into the night sky over the lake.  We're still not sure if this was a great idea or not but it sure was fun.

Many things have changed in the past 15 years.  If I stop for a second and look around, the changes are actually pretty amazing. Despite all the slow, gradual changes that happen when days turn into weeks that turn into years, and despite all the barriers we can come up with such as time, distance, finances, priorities, obligations, health or the will.  Among all the changes, our friendships continue to grow.  Our kids continue to mesh together at every meeting.  Our lives continue to grow together and then apart and then together again.  I think strong solid roots are the foundation of long lasting friendships.

Every time we get together, our friend's prairie roots become intertwined with my girl's northern roots and the kind of friendships that these roots will grow into one can only guess.  In the meantime, we'll keep showing up in each others lives and creating opportunities for more growth and change.

This holiday road that we were on ended up leading us to the University of Saskatchewan campus. What a time of reflection it was for us moms to return to the school where our roots grew together to form the solid foundation that has supported the last twenty years of friendship growth.  And having our kids experience this together with us intertwined their little friendship roots a little tighter.

We toured our old residence and explored buildings and classrooms that used to be so familiar to us. We reminisced about the good times and marveled at the changes. We told the kids stories and bought souvenirs in the bookstore.  We left the U of S campus with warm glows of nostalgia, said good bye to our friends and our holiday road lead us away from the endless prairie fields and back to our northern home.