One of the best things about playing volleyball for the majority of my life has undoubtedly been the friends I have made.

Ladies who will be my lifelong buddies. My posse. My PICs, yo.

Three of those ladies, I got to meet up with last weekend – for a delightful 2 night stay in Leavenworth, the little Bavarian mountain town right smack dab in the middle of the state.

My pal Carey was kind enough to organize a short stay at the wonderful Sleeping Lady Resort, a small and completely charming little cluster of cabins nestled comfortably in the trees. Carey is SO good at these kinds of things. Nails it ‘err time.

I arrived on Friday night, after a two hour drive through the snow. Bryan drove me because he is nice and because I am the worst driver ever my driving skills need work.

We had dinner at Kingfisher restaurant and it felt SO great to be back with my girls. We had wine, great food(albeit, expensive) and ended up closing the place down.

Back in the room we sat around in the AMAZINGLY soft beds, sipping wine, eating chocolate and talking about issues such as full-bottomed underwear and the best wrinkle cremes. I realized, yeah – we’re definitely not 20 anymore. We are women. W-O-M-E-N. We have husbands (and fiances). We have children. And mortgages and our backs hurt.

Although so much has changed within the four of us, our friendships have remained the same. Conversations pick up right where they left off. We wish we could be at every birthday party, job promotion celebration, or major life event for one another. But we can’t. So we text and we call. And sometimes we don’t even do that. But we all know that no matter what happens, we’re still there.

OMG you guys this is sooooooooo sappy. Okay. On to the rest of the weekend before I puke.

The next morning I awoke to the musical stylings of Bekah, who will NEVER disappoint me with her half made up/half real songs and little jigs. What a gem, she is! Getting out the door is challenging with us, it’s like herding cats. Everything takes 1,000 more minutes than it should. In this case, it was totally my fault, but eyeliner application will do that to ya.

We headed into the town for lunch at Munchen Haus for brats and a round of pints. The place was buzzing despite the low temps and so we quickly grabbed a table and clinked our steins.

After lunch, we wandered into a few stores. Our favorite by far was Paprika the”Sophisticated Hippie”.

Then we were off to beer garden no. 2 – Leavenworth Sausage Garten. How much do you love that it’s Garten, not Garden?

The local beer went down real nice and then we all bought chocolates. Oh lawd – SO bavarian.

Then we decided it was time to head back to the hotel to warm our buns in the hot tub. We rang for plastic cups, popped the champagne and headed down the path to the outdoor hot tub lookin DAMN SEXY.

The four of us alone in the hot tub with champagne- you can guess what went down. A FULL ON Kelly Kapowski style swimsuit competition, where each of us pulled the sides of our bottoms up past our hip bones and slooowly walked up the steps out of the hot tub. So. Hot.

After hot tubbing, we headed back to our room to change for our dinner at The Grotto. The interior was quite cozy, with a fully stocked bar and  a menu offering a modest selection of small plates, pizzas and calzones.

My calzone was decent. Nothing great. I may a bit biased however, because Bryan happens to make the best pizza ever and his dough is particularly scrumptious.

After dinner, we skipped dessert in lieu of wine and chocolate back in our little cabin. The highlight of the evening had to be Holly re-living her childhood dream of starring in the “Hold On”  music video by Wilson Philips. She acted out the whole thing, complete with serious/sad faces and it was AWESOME. After, we all huddled around Carey’s cell phone (the ONLY one of us who had reception) and watched the real music video, and I must say…Holly nailed it.

The next morning we woke up to falling snow and the sadness that our weekend was coming to a close. We group hugged for a solid 5 minutes (which isn’t weird to us, or anyone who has played volleyball, btw) and said our goodbyes. It was truly a weekend of love, deep conversation and large sausages.

It was sad, but in the paramount words of Wilson Phillips…

Hold on for one more day….