Ramblings: GNO, ya know.

I get to escape the homestead every now and then for a little Girls Night Out--typically we only get organized enough when Jessica comes back into town and whines loud enough that we all drop what we're doing and gather to stuff our faces and exercise our yappers. Thursday we abandoned the collective 18 children (holy cow that's alot for only 6 girlies--especially because that's not even counting the two that were in utero at the table with us) and met for dinner at Salt Grass. We caught up on everything in between chowing down on salad, onion rings, beer bread, and lots, and lots of shrimp. We would've made Bubba proud. {Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it. }

And since we weren't tired of talking after 2 hours, we reassembled over at Baskin Robbins and hijacked their patio until 12:30 in the morning. We swapped tales of surviving motherhood, all our gory birthing stories, compared our collective deteriorating bladder control issues, made extensive plastic surgery plans, and mostly just laughed our hineys off. It helped that after the ice cream shop closed at 10, the teenaged employees turned the radio up really loud--loud enough for us to enjoy some good dance club music while we sat outside in the 98* heat. (I won't name names, but some of us may have even experienced those bladder control issues--keep in mind there was excessive laughing, occasional dancing and wild hand gesturing, and perhaps even a cough or two).

Jessica startled the guys cleaning up a bit when she knocked on the door to see if one of them would come out and be the cameraman. Little did the sad victim that came to the door know that we would be stealing him for a full-fledged photo session. We had to get at least one that everyone could agree wasn't horrendous. At least we're getting better at that--at the last GNO it took about 20 shots. This time I think we surrendered to the bad lighting and funky poses after only 4 or 5 shots. He was a good sport and played along, but I'm sure the whole time he was worried that he was dealing with a crazy, strung-out group of stay-at-home-moms.

I have an idea! Why don't we make the two preggers take a picture together! After trying out 10 different yoga-ish poses, they settled on this rather boring baby-massaging pose. I made sure to stand really far away from these two--I think whatever they have is contagious and super-strong because they just keep poppin' out babies about every 18 months.

Good fun and a good gab fest. We really should be doing it more often. So Jessica, either you're going to have to start visiting us back here in Texas more often, or I'm going to have to get alot whinier and demanding with these girls!