An old friend. Not old as in, old, just... you know, old.

I woke up at 5:15 in the morning and drove to the Portland temple. Our temple is closed for renovations for at least a year, so we're trying to get creative with our temple attendance. It took me almost 40 minutes to get there - darn Google maps but of course I enjoyed the experience, as usual. It was the temple, what else do you say? I hated it, simply hated it. Anyway, guess how long it took me to get back to the hotel? 4 minutes flat. Ugh.

We all stuffed ourselves silly with the free breakfast - I think the hotel actually lost money by having us as customers... then we headed over to visit an old friend of mine. I tried explaining to my kids how long I have known this particular friend and about choked when I realized we've known each other for 22 years. 22 years? We met when my family moved to Texas at the age of, ahem, 12. Yowsers.

She was so accomodating - she'd just had her fourth child a few weeks before and had ushered out the last of her Fourth of July/baby blessing visitors when we dropped in on the place with our clan. We brought the grand total to eight kids under age eight. Nice.

Sherri, I had a delightful time visiting - you are a wise and beautiful person. And you married a pretty awesome guy, too. Thanks for letting us invade your home for a day. And can you believe that, though I swore it wouldn't happen, I didn't think once about the camera waiting in the car the entire time we were there. Guess we'll just have to rely on the pictures of us in middle school to prove our friendship.

Next stop: Oregon Coast. We drove another hour and a half to Seaside, Oregon. Here's what the girls looked like: