One Behemoth Girls Get-Away!

Cheers to friendship! Cheers to the ability to get-away with friends and escape all the responsibilities of adulthood. Cheers to sharing your stories (and I share A LOT once I get a cup of coffee in me), griping about challenges, laughing at each others quirks, and forgetting the fact that we are pushing 40 by acting like a child.
Saturday, I went to Toronto, Canada (only a two-hour ride from Buffalo) for an overnight girls get-away with my friends, Tammy and Kelly. The cosmopolitans we are toasting with in the photo above, are just as much toasting our friendship as they are toasting the fact that we survived our Saturday's daytime activities.

We began our day in Toronto by going to Canada's Wonderland, an amusement park located just north of the city. It was a perfect autumn day for an amusement park. The temperatures were in the 50's and the lines for the rides were minimal. The biggest thrill was their feature roller coaster called the Behemoth (which I rode three times - one time with my hands in the air!).

After almost seven hours of riding amusement park rides, we headed back into downtown Toronto to check into our hotel and get ready for dinner. We had a leisurely dinner at a Spuntini Ristorante, an Italian Bistro-type restaurant. After dinner, we shared a few Raspberry Stolis & 7-Up. We shared a few toasts, and several good laughs. Although we continually teased Tammy about how she *had to* dance, we did no such thing. The saddest realization was that we are not as young as we used to be. Although we all talked a great talk in our planning stages of this getaway, I think all three of us would've been completely satisfied to have gone back to our hotel room after dinner to go to sleep. Don't get me wrong, its not that we weren't having fun, it's just that we are not as young as we used to be and a day at an amusement park really conked us out. Despite the fact that we were dragging, we closed the Martini bar attached to our hotel with the cosmos we toasted with and still stayed up in our hotel room gabbing until after 2am. The next morning, reality called us home and back to our Mom duties. After staying up until after 2am, we awoke shortly after 8am in order to get on the road and back to the responsibilities that awaited us. For the most part, the ride home was somewhat quiet. I think that was partly because our butts were draggin' but also, I think it was partly because we were savoring the remaining moments of our girls getaway. We returned home as better wives and better mothers. We returned home with not only a greater appreciation of our girlfriends but also those duties which we so badly need a break from. Surely, we had a great time but most importantly, we came home to those most important to us, feeling refreshed and renewed.