I'd wanted to 'brand' it with a band that said something about us. I searched and searched my mind for some common element that we all shared. I came up with an alphabet related name. How about Alpha-biddies (like old ladies - get it?) - which sucked anyway, but then I realized that while 3 of the girls names began with A, B and C, mine began with an L. That wouldn't work. So, I thought, 'How about the A girls?' or 'A-List' since all of our names end in the letter A. Oh, wait, C's name ends in an E. So after wracking my brain, I came up with the lamest connection of all, and made bands that said: D Girls. Because, as I was buying the tank tops I realized that we all wore at least D cup bras. So, D Girls, but also could be like D-girls (as in The Girls).
I shared this with C at the office and she just laughed. She asked, "you can't think of ANYTHING we share in common besides our BRA sizes?" Nope, I can't. She started naming things, but none of them applied to all of us. I have a kid, none of them do, 2 are single, 2 are married. 3 are brunettes, 1 varies. 3 are short, one average. We aren't from the same town, state or countries of birth: Delaware, Hong Kong, Venazuela and France. Now that I think of it, maybe we could have been the International Girls. Well, I didn't think of it before now, so D Girls it is. C admitted that it grew on her.
I brought some board games and we ended up playing Guestures. Its one of my favorite party games for groups. Its silly and really gets people laughing. We laughed until our sides hurt. (Well, to be honest, B fell on a table, it collapsed and she fell a bit more to the floor - so her sides may be hurting for other reasons). I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard or long.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we were all charged with cooking something new that we'd never made. I brought up my lobster, ginger and scallions and decided that I was craving chicken wings - so I brought those, too. C looked online and found a refreshing white Sangria recipe with fresh fruit and berries. A came up with Bobby Flay's cauliflower au gratin, and Giatta's French Onion Soup. B made a baked shell pasta with homemade sauce and bechamel and grilled shrimp. At the last minute I thought I'd try to make crystal dumplings with shrimp, asparagus and cilantro.
We started with the chicken wings and shrimp and picked on those while we were cooking. They were pretty good and we ended up eating so much that we were too full to sit down and eat. So we packed up the soup, put away the cauliflower, pasta and put all the lobster-makings back into the fridge. We figured, give ourselves and hour or so and we'd be hungry. So we played Guestures. An hour later, we still weren't hungry but we all got a little plate and sampled all of the food - including cooking the lobster - except for the soup.
Everything was really good. I'm going to get the recipes (and alterations) from the girls -- oops, I mean D Girls -- and post them on my food blog. I took pictures of almost all of the food, so I'll post those on there.
The next morning, after most of us slept, we got up late -- I think around 10:30 -- went downstairs and made a mish-mash breakfast out of the food we neglected the night before.
We cooked up the bacon, pulled out the Crumbs cupcakes I'd bought, and assembled and re-heated the French Onion Soup. I'd heard of the bacon cupcakes phenomenon but I hadn't seen it in any of my local cupcakeries. I don't know if I'd spend nearly $4 on that concoction, anyway. But since we had my favorite cupcakes and this scrumptious bacon, I crumbled some on top of the Crumbs Twinkie and tried that. It was surprisingly good! I still wouldn't buy it, but I won't turn my nose up at it, either. 
French Onion Soup for breakfast is also a bit odd, but on a weekend of mish-mash eating -- who cares.
We followed our Gour-mash with a game of Scrabble. I broke out my new travel set that rotates and has drawers for all the accessories. Its a cool set. I think the name is Diamond Anniversary Edition. I didn't win. Lets put that out there right away. I held my own but in the end, A's consistent 20+ word plays blew us all out of the water. For the record, B is very smart. She is one of those people that you just assumes knows everything - or close to it. I've played Scrabble with her twice and she is surprisingly bad at it. She knows good words but doesn't seem to utilize the points to their full benefit. To HER full benefit. Just an observation.
C, on the other hand, played an average game but at the last hand, with 30+ points difference, she still felt the need to put her single-point E down somewhere to get the most points -- even though she knew she had no hope of catching up to A's points. That just struck me funny. I think it struck A impatiently - as in "put down your stupid E -- it won't make a difference!" lol.
For the record: Que, Dealtsly, Aine are NOT words. Ide and Ow ARE words.
Here are some shots of our Scrab & Apps:
The weather was getting crappy - crappy-ER - so I had to leave. I knew I'd see my son for 2 hours at the most, and the later I stayed the less I'd see him, so we had to end the day. It was a great weekend for me. A 'toe in the water' way of getting away, but not going too far or being gone too long that I'd feel too much guilt. This was my first weekend/day away from him that wasn't work related. It was a weekend just for me. I thought I'd be thinking about him and feeling badly that my husband was on 'daddy duty' all weekend. I did - but not nearly as much as I thought I would. I know other mom's do it all the time and much earlier than I did. But it was hard for me and I'm very grateful that my friends all understood, and planned a short getaway that I could do guilt-free. They didn't try to make it a long weekend or try to guilt me into staying later or coming earlier. It was perfect. I have some awesome girls. I feel like I went on a mini-vacation. Ahhhhhh.
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