lucky

My dad is a Catholic Deacon. Deacons have to go through Deacon school, and during this training, he met two other men: I'll call them Godfather and Professor.

My dad, Godfather and Professor all happened to have daughters of the same age. We became the best of friends, which was fortunate since we were pretty much forced to be together all of the time. We went to school together, church together, and saw each other socially on the weekends. (We called ourselves "The Deacon Dolls.") We thought we were SO. CUTE. since there was one blonde, one brunette and one redhead. Here is the earliest picture I could find of us:

(Deacon Dolls + Erin (black hair), circa 1986?)

And a few years later, with our "flour sack babies":

(Deacon Dolls, circa 1988)

And right before 7th grade: (I know because I didn't have my braces yet)

(Deacon Dolls circa 1990)

This is where it gets crazy. Brunette and I actually went to high school together and were friends. (She is a year ahead of me.) We traveled in different circles because she was already cool and I was into the whole football game/cheerleading thing, but we still associated with each other. Redhead was "in town", and while we all still saw each other occasionally, it wasn't the same. Then we all went off to college and work and grew up and grew apart and it was actually quite sad if you think about it.

Until....

I moved to Austin for work and my parents were all, "Redhead and Brunette live there too! You should call them!" And I was all, "I haven't really talked to them in like 4 years, so that would be kind of weird." However, we reconnected via email and the rest is history. I don't know how we all ended up in the same city, but I'm very thankful we did. We were young and fun for several years. We would go downtown and laugh and dance til wee hours of the morning.

(Deacon Dolls, circa 2004?)

We all have grown-up jobs now, and in May (once I'm done), we'll all have our Masters degree. (Should Masters have an apostrophe? Embarrassingly enough, I'm at a loss on this one.) We don't see each other as often as we should, but we still see each other. The last time we were all together was Memorial Day, when we had a little BBQ:

(Deacon Dolls circa 2010)

No real reason for this post, I just found some old pictures of us and realized what a blessing it is to have actual life-long friends.

Sarah+Margaret+Rachel = BFF. LYLAS.