to my friend...

first of all, sorry for the week long leave of absence. i'm sure you were all DYING without my posts :) i've been sick, and therefore spending most of my days/nights drunk on theraflu/nyquil and sleeping my sickness away. 

today i want to dedicate a special birthday post to one of my very best friends ever. some friends come in to your life for a reason. i believe that's the case with my friend dasha. we first started hanging out back when i was still a "we". we lived right down the road from the cassitys and spent a ton of time with them. that was about 5 years ago. 5 years? that seems crazy. dasha has been there for me through several discouraging times in my life, and through a lot of happy times as well. from marital fights to infertility, to finding out my little sister was pregnant and thinking my life was completely falling apart (little did i know...right?), to the big D. we were supposed to be hanging out with mike and dasha the night the ex told me he wanted a divorce. i had to call and cancel on them, and through my sobbing and tears, dasha was a huge sense of comfort to me. i don't think i've ever met two more compassionate and selfless people than mike and dash (it's not mike's birthday, so he's not getting special attention...but for the record, he's awesome.) after the big D went down and i was pretty much rendered homeless for a short period of time, mike and dash opened their home to me. cooked me meals. took care of me. listened to me complain. and eventually, helped me start being myself again. i seriously don't know how i'll ever be able to repay them for what they've done for me. i wouldn't trade my memories with dasha for anything. i took a little time to look back on all the things we've done together. here are just a few:

oh millsap

photoshoot with millsap at the mcdonalds in tooele. people thought we were crazy. i think we took like 8 pictures with him. she's obsessed. well we both are really. on her 24th birthday we had a millsap themed birthday party. i made her her own cardboard cutout of millsap, it wasn't life-sized but it was still awesome. and she still has it. 

RSL

last summer at a real game. i think one of the first things we ever did with mike and dasha was go to a real salt lake game. and look at this...4 years later, and still going strong :)

bear lake

this was taken last summer during one of our several trips to bear lake with the cassitys. i love spending time up there with them. 2 years ago we spent the 4th of july up there, which happens to be my birthday, and dasha surprised me with a red white and blue birthday cake. bear lake is one of my favorite places. it's even better when you get to go with amazing people.

skiing

dasha took me skiing this winter for the first time in about 12 years. she was a pretty amazing instructor, and had me tearing down the mountain in no time. i got a little too confident at one point and totally wiped out. right under the ski lift. it was awesome.

sammy's

most recently....our trip to sammy's when dash, marianne and ash came down to see my new digs. i have the most supportive friends a girl could ask for. not a day goes by that i don't realize just how lucky i am. 

dasha is pregnant right now with their first kid. a little boy. if she's even close to being as good of a mother as she is a friend, this kid is in luck. pretty sure he's going to have the coolest parents on the planet. i couldn't be happier for them.

dash...happy birthday! i'm so grateful for our friendship. 

probably one of my favorite photos of all time

xoxo-meg