Alright, I’m gonna lay this down right at the start. I lead a charmed life. A golden ticket kind of life. An I-don’t-deserve-this kind of life. Not gonna pretend otherwise. And I’m not going to tag this “#blessed” because then it gets all oogy with “why is she blessed and I’m not” and all health and wealth gospel and this is not that. I am lucky and I know it and I don’t know why full stop. Disclaimer made:

I WENT TO NEW YORK CITY!!

Oh you guys, it was so, so great! It’s all true! Everything they tell you about NYC – the crowds, the energy, the crazy people!

Just look what we got to experience! The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

An Advent scavenger hunt at The Met (The Visitation and the Annunciation).

And for all my Whovian friends:

Grand Central Station!

Central Park!

The Statue of Liberty!

The Strand bookstore!

A Broadway show!

Rockefeller Center!

Truly it all exists and it is amazing. But you want to know what’s even more amazing? These two.

That right there is 27 years of friendship, folks. And here is where I’m pulling out the “#blessed.” Because I thank Jesus all the time for these two. Because he smiled the day he put those three names on the same homeroom roster in Grade Nine. Because I cannot imagine life without these two.

We went to grade nine grad together. We went on choir trips together. We graduated together. We wrote letters (real letters!!) to keep in touch from mission trips and Bible colleges and African adventures and child-bride-teeny-apartments. We shared pee stick results.

We have cried buckets of tears, probably evenly split between tears of laughter and tears of despair. But never real despair, because we’ve always had each other.

Oh, and we’ve had these guys:

Our poor, long-suffering, forbearing, patient husbands. The ones who orchestrated this whole thing (well, they decided we needed a trip and then we planned it) and the ones who sat back while we loved on each other.

(The Husband has a bit of an advantage here in that he’s been around the whole time, but the other two are Johnny-come-latelys and are newbies with only 15 years with us. But I’m not sure The Husband counts that as any advantage since he’s had to hear the same jokes for more than a decade longer….)

We did everything together (masterfully logisticized by that tall bald one – he is the perfect guide in NYC because he’s six foot eleventeen and he sticks out in every crowd AND he can read a map/subway schedule like NOBODY’S business). We ate and drank so, so well.

We took approximately a hundred subway rides.

We posed for carefully-arranged selfies (because SOMEONE had the forethought to win a selfie stick at his work teambuilding event and I officially eat crow and yes, itwasagoodideaforyoutobringitandimsorryimadefunofyouandareyouhappynow?!

(Friends at the “Friends” building – get it?)

The occasion for this trip? Well, every single person you see in this picture is 40 years old. Yep – for three weeks after I turned 40 (I’m the baby!) and before The Husband hits 41 (he’s the old man of the bunch!), we are ALL the same age. And because I am the luckiest girl in the world, our wonderful husbands (with planning help from us) decided we needed to celebrate in style.

My heart is so, so full right now. I am lucky AND #blessed. These are the friends you pray for for your kids. These are the friends you would call at 3 am. These are the friends who hop on planes when you need them and who sit vigil beside you. These are the friends who understand your unique shorthand where one person says “home ec” and you all start cackling. These are the friends who do this:

(Like I said, our poor husbands. Pray for them. If we have our way, they’re in for at least 27 more years of this.)

Oh, and before I forget, shout out to yet another parent-trip-enabler who came to mind the munchkins while we were gone. Our very own “Uncle Buck”:

(The kids are alive and I’m not asking any questions.)

Yes, Peitricia, there is a Santa Claus. And grace and love and Jesus and kindness and far, far more love than I could ever imagine exists and it comes through the hands and feet and hearts of my girls. Love, love, triple love.