Making friends...creating a village all my own!

I have lamented on here more than once about not having a circle of friends here in Tulsa. Well, that's changed! As you can see from Libby's birthday post, we had a nice gathering of folks. Who are they!? Our new friends! One gal, I actually met online before I ever thought about moving here. She was married in Hawaii and we "met" online in a forum for brides getting married in the islands. We've gotten together a handful of time since I've moved here but she's super busy as a SAHM to three littles and I work during the week so it's hard for our calendars to align. She also travels a bunch with her family since her hubby works for American Airlines. Anyway, she's a great gal and whenever we do get together we have the best time!

The second family, we met in October. They've just adopted a new baby and really wanted to feed her breast milk. So they looked for local donors and voila! They happened to contact me just as I was debating what to do with a freezer overflowing with frozen milk that Libby had NO INTEREST in drinking. I was days away from heading to Seattle for two weeks and told J that if the milk disappeared (read: was thrown away) while I was out-of-town to make room in the freezer, I'd understand. But there was no way I was going to dump all that milk myself! There was well over 100 oz.! And I was devastated just to have to dump 30 oz. when I discovered my excess lipase issue back in March! Anyway, long story short, this family contacted us and we gave them all of our frozen milk. I continue to freeze what I can (although I've been pumping less and less now that Libby is older) and give it to them. They've had us over for a couple of visits and are just the nicest people! They're originally from California, so we have that in common as well.

And finally, my newest friend is actually my dental hygienist. I met her in December when I went to a new dentist for a routine dental cleaning. Turns out pregnancy and a less-than-attentive previous dentist created some issues that needed resolving. FOUR appointments later, it's been taken care of and I got a new friend out of the deal! I knew I liked her as soon as I saw a framed photo of her pet pug dog in her office. It turns out that she's got a daughter just a couple of months younger than Libby and we immediately clicked. We talked about being working moms, breastfeeding/pumping, in-laws and mothers, and life. Even though we had just met and most of our conversation had been between work in my mouth, I brought her a birthday invite and hoped she could make it to the party. She did and we're going to take the girls to the aquarium in a few weeks. I appreciate that she's a working mama and knows how hard it is to balance being a mom, a career-woman and a wife.

So it goes...I'm developing a little circle of friends. We've been here 2.5 years and it's finally starting to happen. I am SO grateful!