Friendsgiving.

ONE WEEK TO THANKSGIVING!

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You can email this post to yourself (or anyone else!), so you can come back to it later!

This isn't about that, though. There are definitely some links below on what you should definitely absolutely cook, but this is mainly a gush-fest about the best.weekend.ever that I had a few days ago.

I've talked about this before, but my a cappella work now stems from my a cappella group in college, think Andy from The Office meets the cast of pitch perfect but with no autotune and more legit problems. Same adoration for each other, same adoration for the music.

So a bunch of us got together last weekend! Six from my old group, one fiancee, and one baby. It was the best ever, and I came back so refreshed and reminded of how much I love those women, how lucky we are to have each other, how stupid we are to not see each other more.

I was also lucky enough to cook a lot of the food, including a big Friendsgiving spread with my friend Lexy, and a soup on Friday night that I'm going to show you very soon. It's perfect for the come-and-go crazy holiday weeks we're entering into right now.

A key thing to note about this group is that, after we had all been in the house for two hours on Friday, our wine-buyer said "omg you guys we're going to run out of wine. I planned on this for the whole weekend!" We didn't run out of wine, but we did....drink more on the first night than we did on the second, let's leave it at that. This is the type of group where pleasantries are QUICK, making way super fast for important, deep, heart-wrenching conversations. These are the people that I walk into a room and immediately start spilling my soul to.

These are also the types of people that find it funny to quote Anchorman, Parks and Rec, and Mean Girls like there's no tomorrow, so don't worry about us being able to find balance.

We talked marriage, wedding planning, NOT wanting to get married, kids or not, challenges in jobs, with families, with coming out, with knowing who we are. We talked 2018, when two of us are getting married (Ireland and Pittsburgh!!), we talked bridesmaids dresses, we talked about naked vs. not while sleeping after sex, we talked about politics and feeling so desperate to be around more people like ourselves that we feel like drowning some days. We talked about hope, we talked about drinking and breastfeeding, we talked labor and delivery, we talked about dogs that we love as much as human children.

We talked about how much we love each other, how much we cherish our college memories together but also adore the new memories we are forging.

A toast was made that started with "it is very rare to find people who..." and we all started bawling. It's true though - we all met eleven years ago and make active, time consuming, expensive choices to see each other because we want to.

We colored a birthday tablecloth and contemplated that one of our group has had maybe 5 of the last 10 birthdays with a ton of our group because it always fell on the weekend of a big music conference we went to.

We had mimosas and margs and chips and guac and bread and cheese with pickles and mustard. We talked crappy food intolerances and toddler eating habits. This, in particular, was birthday guacamole.

On Saturday we made a big Friendsgiving spread, including these sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberries, and a gazillion and one other amazing items. We sang happy birthday to our birthday girl more than once, played games, and generally basked in each other's company.

For whatever reason, family holidays aren't quiiiiiite as relaxing as the above description. The family we chose for ourselves all those years ago, though, provided the absolute perfect kickoff to the holiday season - love, food, wine, tears, snuggles.