Visit from an International Woman of Mystery

My oldest friend in the world, Christina Carlsson, came to visit us and meet the boys last weekend.

Ryan, Christina, Stokes and William

A little history - when I was around 8 years old and in second grade, my family moved to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Christina lived in the same compound (like a neighborhood - kinda...) as us and she was the first friend that I made there. She and I became inseparable and spent pretty much all of our time together. Her mom is Brazilian, her dad is Swedish, she currently lives in London, travels the world for work and speaks several languages, including English, Portuguese, Swedish and Spanish (there may be more!).  When my family moved back to the US in sixth grade, I was heartbroken to leave my best friend! We kept in touch though and she and her family came to visit us when we lived in Dallas as well as Greenville and we went to Camp Greenville and Camp Grady Spruce together a few summers.

She and I have one of those relationships where we don't speak all that often, or really even do a good job of staying in touch, but when we get together it's like no time has passed. That's really amazing, considering we were besties when we were 8 - 12 years old.

Her parents were like second parents to me, with as often as Christina and I hung out, and we're friends on Facebook so I can keep up with how everyone is doing. I even spent Christmas in 2005 in Brazil with Christina and her parents. My mom had just passed away and my Dad was living overseas so when they invited me to a tropical getaway to a Brazilian beach to stay with them over the holidays, I gladly accepted.

Me and Christina in Santos, Brazil

Christina and me overlooking Rio de Janeiro from Christ The Redeemer statue

The Carlssons and me at dinner in Santos, Brazil

That was ten years ago. Whoa! Christina and I hadn't seen each other since. I invited her and her family to my wedding, but knew that it was way too far to travel for them to come for a weekend. So with Christina's current job involving travel, she reached out to me to let me know that she would have to spend about 2 weeks in Winston Salem, NC with work. She had a day off on the weekend so plans were set. She drove down, by herself, in a foreign country, in a rental car, right after the big SouthEast shutdown following Storm Jonas, probably tired and stressed from work, 3 hours to Greenville to meet Thomas and the boys and visit with me. Brave soul. I'm so glad she did!!! We had planned for her to stay for the whole weekend, but it turned out that she had to work on Saturday and I got stuck in Buffalo due to the travel delays from the storm all day on Saturday, so we only had the day on Sunday for our visit.

When she got here, I introduced her to the boys and we did some minor catching up.

Christina with Stokes

Selfie with William

Selfie with William and Stokes

William and Christina sharing a brownie

Selfie time

Can you tell that the boys took to her immediately? They were big fans of Tina!

After we got the boys down for their afternoon nap, she and I took off for Downtown Greenville. We walked around and I showed her some of the cool things that our city has to offer. We looked through some stores, walked along the bridge at Falls Park, had lunch at Sushi Murasaki and talked...A LOT. We had 10 years worth of info to catch up on!

I know this is the worst picture! The sun was shining so brightly
and I didn't have any sunglasses with me!
Selfie on the bridge with Reedy River Falls behind us

We eventually came back home where we spent some more time with the boys, had dinner and just hung out. 

Ryan, Christina, Stokes and William

Christina wanted a Diet Coke so Thomas grabbed one out of the fridge and gave it to me to give to her. I loved this...and how perfect it was...the Diet Coke can said "Share a Diet Coke with your...BFF"! Classic.

Photo documentation of the Diet Coke BFF can

Despite the fact that she had a 3 hour drive back to Winston-Salem and had to be up and ready for work early the next day, Christina stayed through our bedtime routine with the boys. For not having any kids of her own yet, she's a total natural. The boys loved her and Stokes and William both said, "Night night, Tina" and "Love you, Tina" to her before they went to bed. It was so sweet!

I got a few pictures of her with all the boys before we put them down for the night.

All the boys with Christina!

Ryan was loving it

Everyone look up and say "cheese"!

Night night time!

It was such a fun visit, and felt like no time had passed, but my only complaint was that it was too short! We talked about possibly doing an exotic vacation together in the future (she went to Indonesia for Christmas this year and hearing her talk about it gave me the travel bug). Or maybe I'll be able to go visit her in London at some point (and stalk my other besties, Will and Kate and the royal family). But regardless of when, where, how, I hope it's not another 10 years before we see each other again.

We all love you, Christina! xoxo