One is silver and the other gold

These past two weeks I have had many wonderful chances to spend some quality time with friends new and old. It reminded of the little poem/nursery rhyme that goes, "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold." I think that's how it goes...anyway, it's a very true little saying. I really like my friends and I thank God that he delivers people into our lives who can mesh so well with us and meet us where we are in life, even if we haven't talked to them in months.

Two weeks ago, our friends Chris and AnnMarie were vacationing in Canon Beach. Jeff and I drove up there one evening to have dinner with them. It was really great to catch up on life and to marvel at how much their two adorable kids had grown since the last time we had seen them in August. Chris was in Jeff's engineering cohort and AnnMarie was in my education cohort, so the 4 of us share a lot of common memories of our days at Fox. But they live in Tacoma, WA now, so we don't see them nearly often enough.

That same we week we had a game night at Joe and Stephanie's house. They are two great people about our age who work at Twin Rocks. The 4 of us, along with Mary (TR head housekeeper) and Josh (TR intern) often get together for dessert and games. I really like our little game nights because we always end up having really great conversations and everytime I feel like I get to know each of them a little bit better.

Last Saturday I had the chance to go into the valley to get some shopping done, and I decided to call my old college roommate Suzi to see if she was available to get together while I was there. Sure enough she had the whole day free, so we went shopping together and had a delicious sushi lunch. Suzi and I met our freshman year and really got to be good friends our junior year when we lived in the very small Weezner apartment together. We both started dating the men we are now married to while we lived together, so we had many late nights staying up giggling and sometimes crying over those relationships.

Since last Sunday we have hosted friends at our house or gone over to someone else's house every evening. It has been so much fun! Exhausting at times, but very much worth it. We've played games until 11:00 PM (on a school night), sung kareokee, had a bon-fire and roasted hotdogs, and fellowshiped with the people in our young adults bible study.

God has been so good to put so many wonderful new friends in our path, and to still bless us with the old friends!