honestly.

so i'm long overdue for updating the blog..life just keeps happening oh so quickly! we've just had so many blogtastic moments in our life recently, but i must specifically write about this one...

you see we had been planning a game night with our dear friends jaq and abby for quite some time now since it had been at least a month since our last fantastic game night. they're quite wonderful, frantic and fun.

so we had planned on last saturday night. ry and i had been getting very excited and were preparing for the day to come when jaq facebooked with terrible news. abby had to cancel...she was off to nascar.

we giggled to ourselves and told jaq she should still come over, so of course she did. and then the honesty began!!!

jaq came before the arranged 6pm time and decided she had to drive around near the beach until 6pm. i only found this out because i called her to see what her eta was because we were making hummus and needed some more chick peas. we laughed at her for being silly and told her that we HONESTLY didn't mind if she showed up early. the more jaq in our lives, the better.

so she came and we all adventured together for the chick peas and came back and finished the hummus. we all decided together that it wasn't great, but for the picture's sake, jaq pretended to love it. this was one of the lesser honest moments of the evening ;)

so then ryan was honest with us and told us all he wanted to do was go for a walk. so we bundled up ... and dressed like twins and went on our way:

our walk was awesome. we started talking about church. and what church means. and what church should look like. and what we like/dislike in a church. it was so nice to have a real conversation and just try to figure out what we think and want church to look like for us. sigh, we enjoy conversations like that.

so we got back and we were still talking about church and looking at the websites of the different churches we each were trying out the next day when i asked jaq if she had eaten any dinner. she said no and i could tell she was hungry...and we told her she had to be honest with us and just tell us she was hungry. so she finally let out her secret that yes, she would like some dinner...so we got to work!!!

CHOCOLATE CHIP BANANA PANCAKES WITH PEANUT BUTTER AND SYRUP IT WAS!!!!!!

...and some delightful tea, courtesy of nate, nick, brad and dan...a delightful wedding present, indeed:

so we sat and ate our delightful treats and just continued to enjoy each other and discussed the importance of honesty in friendship. it's such a cool mark of a good friendship when you can be completely honest with someone...like telling them you're hungry and really need some chocolate chip banana pancakes before you pass out!

the other important detail of this night was that we had to celebrate jaq's birthday that had just occurred. and by just occurred, i mean two weeks ago. we had spent the afternoon preparing and we came up with this treat:

yes, that is a tea cup. and it MIGHT look like a delicious mocha, but in fact it is a cupcake...

so after three hours of our "game night" we finally settled in and broke out our all time favorite game...frantic four. if you've never played it before, you should definitely come over to our house so we can introduce you to the wonderful creation that will some day make us, jaq and amy dodd millions!!

we finished off our night with some phase 10 that ryan ended up winning. i think it was only because i kept using my skips on jaq so ryan wouldn't feel bad and he could catch up to us when he was losing...but that clearly backfired. oh well...he was a gracious winner..

Not!!!

By then the hour was approaching 11 and we decided to call it a night. it was such a fun evening full of unexpected events. we always have fun with jaq, but we definitely reached new heights ... and learned the importance of honest friendship and how good conversation can be so encouraging when you least expect it.