Girls' Night Out

9 of 11 Fousins, originally uploaded by crau1971.

The nine women you see in this picture have known each other all of their lives, literally. I am the oldest of this bunch; these are (most of) the children of my parents' best friends, the Carchedis and the Costellos. We all spent a tremendous amount of time together when we were young. I remember the Carchedis coming over during the Blizzard of '78 to cook, as we had a gas stove, and they didn't. The Costellos always rented a house in Poponesset, down on Cape Cod, and after time, we rented there, too. Birthdays, christenings, weddings, funerals, graduations, and a slew of other life events, both big and small, have been shared by these three families.

As we all grew older, and further away in distance, we saw each other less and less. So finally, we all decided to pick a night that we would hold ourselves to keeping, and get together, for no other reason than we missed each other. So, Saturday night, 9 of the 11 made it out to Lewis' in Norwood, then Napper Tandy's, and laughed for hours and hours about absolutely nothing important, and everything wonderful all at once. We called it Fousins' Night Out (fousins = fake cousins), and it was marvelous.

So thank you, to my sisters, Colleen and Cat, Erin and Kate Costello, and Kristen, Aimee, Danielle, and Bethany Carchedi (they have married names, too), for an amazing evening. You are all my sisters of the heart, if not of actual family.