Meeting a virtual friend

     On Friday night, John and I had a special dinner planned. To meet relatively perfect strangers! Sounds like fun, huh? Actually, though the couple we met for dinner were people we had never met in person, 1/2 of the couple I have know for a few years.

     For any of my friends that have been pregnant, a "must read" is What to Expect When You are Expecting.  I've read this book each and every time I was pregnant, no matter how veteran a Mom I am. With JT's pregnancy and the advances in the internet and popularity of social media site, WTE has message boards for all things pregnancy, infants, toddlers and beyond. What happens for some, including me, was you join the month/year message board for your expected arrival. There, women from all over the world post questions, offer support, and in the case of several from our group friendships form.

     Over 2 years ago, the WTE message board moved to a private group on Facebook- what we call WTE June 09. It's quite a cool thing that has evolved over the life of our now 3 year old children. In addition to the main group, there are side boards for June Mom's on topics such as fitness/weight loss, believing/Christian Mom's, Mom's with little ones with special needs just to name a few. Though some have never met in person, the bond of friendship through message board and now FB is strong among our nearly 200 members.

     Once some of my "June Mom's", as I refer to them to my family, heard of our trip to Orlando, one of friends, Ravi, said that she really wanted to meet in person while we were in town. Granted, she and her husband live in Tampa- about 1.5-2 hours away and they were willing to drive up just to have dinner with us. Pretty awesome. We arranged some reservations at Maggiano's and met Ravi and her husband John there for some good food and conversation.

 Ready to hit the town and sporting a cute little dress and high heels (a rarity if you know me)

The adorable couple posing as best we could for a self portrait held by me. My heels made me nearly as tall as John standing at 6 feet.

 Look at these adorable wedges! Guessing 4 inch heels? They were surprisingly comfortable to walk in and wear.

 My friend Ravi! Thankfully there weren't any awkward moments and it was a great fit-LOL! You never know if you get what you read on the internet these days. Ravi could have turned out to be a crazy cake lady- I joke Ravi, I joke. I know you will be reading this, so I had to include a jab at you :) Both of the John's got along well and told some tall tales over the evening.

With the lighting being so dim in the restaurant, many of the photos didn't turn out very well. When we were standing, I felt like an Amazon giant compared to the tiny and adorable Ravi- who BTW was also wearing heels. It was such a fun evening laughing over many stories about our kids and life in general. I hope to someday meet up again with Ravi or some of my other June Mom friends.