Meggie and Clara

I'm still catching up on blog posts but we did make it home yesterday after 31 hours of travel. We were exhausted but the girls did really well and we arrived minus only one bag this time - last time the airlines lost all of our checked luggage for 3 days! Of course the missing bag is the one with the gifts we brought back for people. . .

Anyhoo - when I asked Meggie what she wanted for her birthday this year she said she wanted to see her best friend Clara again. Meggie and Clara had known each other virtually all their lives in Tyler and shared a close friendship. Both are the oldest siblings of four, and Clara's brothers are just about exactly the same age as Meggie's sisters. As fate would have it Clara moved from Tyler to Colorado only a few days before we moved to New Zealand, again they had something in common.

Since I was still in the planning stages for our trip to the States it was easy to honor Meggie's desire to see Clara again - after talking with her mom, Jessica, I booked Clara a ticket to fly to Tampa and spend a few days with Meggie. She bravely flew alone and arrived the day before Ali and I got back from NYC so Mimi and Big Daddy took Meggie to pick her up and shared these pictures:

Lovely little girls at the airport seeing each other again for the first time.

They spent their first day together frolicking on Clearwater Beach (and I'm not bitter or anything, but while these lovely pictures were being taken Ali, Anna, Josie and I were sitting on the airplane on the tarmac for three hours waiting for the weather to pass so our plane could take off) - Clara loved it and mom said she built a fantastic sandcastle but the battery on mom's camera died so she couldn't get a picture.



The girls' friendship picked up right where it had left off, it was a joy to see them together again!
After Josie and I got back we all went to Busch Gardens to celebrate but I have so many pictures I'll put them in another post - sadly Clara's visit all too quickly drew to a close. I took this picture of the girls at the gate just before Clara boarded her plane back home:
Friendship is such a blessing!