After our previous week of sickness, the girls and I were definitely in need of some time out of the house.  We drove out to my friend Chantelle's place for some tea, visiting and play time for the girls.

Chantelle's daughter Cyra is right smack dab in the middle of both my girls, being 9 months younger than Eva and 8 months older than Isabella.  I always imagined that the three of them would be such good friends; a little troop of girly fun.  The girls hadn't seen each other in awhile, but Eva had been re-aquantainted with a stuffed purple hippo that Cyra gave her on her first birthday so we had been chatting a lot about her friend Cyra lately.  Even though Eva can be quite shy most times, my heart was happy when she walked in, dropped her stuff and took off playing with Cyra without even batting an eye.

A few minutes later Chantelle and I walked into the living room and found both girls curled up on the couch together, sharing a blanket and watching Dora.  It was a sweet moment to see how big our girls had become and how they are obviously well on their way to that picture of friendship perfection I had imagined.

Chantelle and I spent the morning catching up on the last 6 months of each other's lives, laughing at the funny things our kids do and her showing me around her beautiful new house with a view of the mountains and overlooking the coulees and river.  As our morning went on, our conversation became peppered with arguments and fights, "I had this toy first" and plenty of "it's mine!" to make me want to pull my hair out.  My picturesque view of the girls playing nicely and being best friends and holding hands was gone as we broke up fights and removed toys because they weren't being shared.  There were plenty of tears, and stomping of feet, and pouty lips shared between all three girls.

As we neared lunch time, emotions ran high as tummy's began to rumble.  I wanted to get one last good picture of all three girls together, but instead they couldn't wipe the pouts off their faces, Eva refused to share some cars she had found, Bella was reaching and screaming for them anyway, and Cyra stomped off to the bedroom.

Chantelle and I wouldn't let them get away with their bad attitudes towards each other so we before we left we asked them to hug each other.  It was a really sweet moment as the girls set aside their disagreements, forgot about the toys and Bella and Cyra leaned in for an embrace.

But Cyra wasn't quite ready to call it a truce with Bella just yet.

Then Cyra climbed up on the bed to hug Eva.  Eva sat with her arms folded across her body refusing to say goodbye.  She finally softened and in a really demanding voice she half-yelled "GIVE ME A HUG".  I reprimanded her for her lack of manners so she added in an equally demanding voice "PLEASE!"