My friend, Michelle, and I don’t get much of an opportunity to catch up (uninterrupted) when we see each other.  A few weeks ago, she threw out the idea of a pre-baby girls weekend.  (She’s expecting another sweet baby and we both know that life gets more complex when adding a new member to the family.) Anyway, we accomplished the feat of finding a weekend that worked for both of us and decided to keep our plans to a minimum.  In fact, the only thing we decided on by the time we pulled our of her driveway late Friday morning was that we would head south in I-35.  We figured we could stop once we didn’t see snow anymore.  That put us smack dab in Des Moines, IA.  Not exactly a common place to road trip to, but for us, it wasn’t about the destination.  Rather, we were hoping to get a chance to talk, laugh, and sleep.  All of which we accomplished.  Well, maybe not so much on the sleep end, but it was still nice to sleep through the night and not be woken up by a child.

On Saturday, we did get out to see the botanical gardens in downtown Des Moines, had dinner at a taco restaurant (food was tasty, but the service was terrible,) and saw the 9:30pm showing of  I Can Only Imagine, before continuing to talk until almost 2am.  We got up Sunday morning, had breakfast at the hotel, and found a church nearby that had mass at 11am.  After mass and a stop for a cup of coffee, we headed for home.

Both of us are grateful for our husbands who managed things on the home front so we could get away and recharge.  (Here are the Shecklets with the homemade pizzas they had for dinner on Friday night.)