My crazy friends

So Sheila has been reading my blog and made a comment that I haven't talked about any of my friends yet. So here it goes.
I have 3 super close friends - Vicki, Jen and Sheila. They are all so different and bring out different qualities in me. We all have such different relationships too, so it is really fun.
I have known Vicki since a few days before kindergarten started for Jerrika and her son, Brenden. We talk about 10 times a day about everything and anything. From what the kids are doing to what husbands have or haven't done (more the haven't for her and more the have for me). How work is going for her and what I am doing at home. We just chat to chat.
One of the best parts of our relationship is how well our kids do together. We have Jerrika, Jonathan, Brenden and Danielle. So 2 girls, 2 boys; 2 bigs, 2 littles. They all play really well together and swap in and out. Sometimes the girls will play together, while the boys play together. Sometimes it is the bigs and the littles. It is most often all 4 playing make believe together and just having fun. It really makes life easy.
Vicki and I can talk about anything or just nothing. We can hang out here or go out and have a laugh.
We both like to eat, have some wine and we love to walk. She doesn't like to cook and I love to, so in some ways we are opposite, which makes life nice too!
Our families go on vacation together almost every year and it is always cool. This year we didn't and next year we won't either. For some reason, she thinks it is important to go to England to see her sister get married, I so don't get that.. J/K..
Jen and I have known each other since I moved to AZ in 2001. Her son, Tristan, is 6 months younger than Jerrika and her daughter, Ariel, is 6 months older than Jonathan. She was smarter than me and stopped at 2. So poor Jillianne is a pig tail with no one to hang out with.
We have called each other "the other half of my brain" for years. When she starts a sentence, I will finish it. If I start to say something, she will finish it. If I forget what I am going to do, I will call her and ask. Weird thing is, she will know exactly what to say or do!
We have been through a lot together. Husband's losing jobs, her changing from working for someone to having her own practice. Surgeries, babies, moving etc. We share a lot, which is so neat.
She and I are so similar but different. I really value that in our friendship. She is one of the few people that I know I can call for anything and she will be there in a heart beat (she has too!) And she has told me that I am one of the few she can do the same with.
Now Sheila is a different story. She and I met online in a baby chat room in 1998 before either of us were trying to have a baby. We became friends in our baby group since we were both from the Pacific NW - me from Washington and her from a little town outside Victoria BC.
When Jerrika was about 6 months old and Grace was almost a year, I flew up to Seattle to visit my parents. Sheila came down and we met face to face for the first time. Not only did we have a great online relationship, but we had a great time chatting in real life (sometimes that relationship just doesn't translate well).
She, Nathan, Angus and Grace came to visit us in March 2004. They stayed in my parents condo in Scottsdale and we met up daily. We both thought it would be better not to be together 100% of the time for the first visit - what if it didn't go well? Well it went so well that we went up a few months later to visit them! In fact, in 2004, we went up to Sooke 2 different times for a week at a time.
During their first visit here, we took them to Montezuma's castle and well, Sedona and the guys went to a Hockey game. In March we were swimming in the pool at the condo too, which was almost too strange for them!
Sheila and I are so comfortable with each other, we can just sit and be or sit and chat. We alternate roles of who is in charge of the kids and just have a great time. One of our favorite things to do is to read cookbooks while having a glass of wine. Nothing much better than that!
So she has come to visit us in 2005 and 2006 as we were packing to move to Memphis.
When she came in 2006, we were living in our "new" house in Anthem (the Spirit) and we had our "old" house (the Rialto) on the market. Our Spirit didn't have a pool, so we had to go to the Rialto to swim. She became the great white scorpion hunter - she killed 4 or 5 over there the week that she visited! One was walking on her shoulder and she flicked it off, like she would an ant, then looked and saw it was a scorpion. I have never seen someone to violently killing one - she wanted o make certain it was seriously DEAD! She killed all the other scorpions without batting an eye!
One day, we were swimming at the Rialto and called Derek and said we were on our way home (to the Spirit). He said, don't bother as we have a showing in 45 minutes. I said, nope, we'll be right there to help you clean it up. So I took the downstairs, Derek took the upstairs and Sheila did picking up. In 30 minutes, we cleaned a 5000 sq ft house, top to bottom; had everything from all the kids picked up, 4 kids and 2 adults dressed and all 7 of us out the door for the showing (sadly the house didn't sell to that peron, but it was sure funny to watch us!)
We didn't get to see Sheila and family in 2007 - we had moved back to Phoenix and had Jillianne, but finances weren't right for her to come down. So in June 2008, she and the kids came down for a week. The boys played so well together and so did the girls. We got to sit and play on our computers or drink wine and watch them in the pool. We did a lot of shopping while they were here. Prices are much better in the states, so she loads up on shoes and sunscreen. Our sunscreen (pump Coppertone) is about $7 a bottle. In Canada, the same bottle would be about $14, if they can find it that big!
Sheila brings me all sorts of great gifts - mainly food, which consists of ketchup chips and smarties. 2 things my kids love and we can't get in the states! People think ketchup chips sound weird - well we have bbq sauce and bbq chips, ranch sauce and ranch chips, so why not ketchup chips? They are tart and tangy and just delicious! Oh now my mouth is watering for them...
Next summer, our plan is to drive from here to SD, then up the west coast and spend a week or so with them in Sooke. She is already planning on coming down for spring break. We'll see them again in October in Disneyland and the kids are all looking forward to it!
So there you go - my crazy friends are now accounted for!