Playing Grown Ups

Like many little girls, when I was little, my cousin and I would play Barbies for hours. We'd spend hours setting up our Barbie furniture and accessories just right, everything in its perfect place. We'd imagine all sorts of stories and scenarios. There were of course always the two beautiful young girls, often princesses, usually 16 or just turning 16 (thank you Little Mermaid), they always had the perfect boyfriends. Perhaps a little bit of drama thrown in for excitement, because there has to be conflict before you get the happily ever after, right? We would play at being grown ups. To us of course that happened naturally at 16 because that's when you met prince charming, got married, had a mansion (or a castle or palace, anything huge and grandiose worked), horses, carriages, servants, etc. Thankfully we passed through that age a little bit wiser as to how things really worked and we didn't expect to live in a castle. Meet a prince charming perhaps, but not the other stuff. As the stories have it, things never go exactly as you might have imagined...they turn out better. Mine sure did. I am marrying the most wonderful prince charming I could ever have imagined.

I told him the other day that I feel like I'm going to feel like we're playing grown ups for a while and that eventually someone will come in and tell us to put our toys away, it's time to eat dinner or go to bed or something. As of New Year's Eve the fiance and I officially became home owners. It's still surreal, a total "wow". We own a house, we're getting married. It's exciting and crazy and thrilling and just completely mind blowing all at the same time. A wonderful and amazing way to start the new year. Playing grown ups. But for real this time.