More goodbyes...sad farewell to Olivia and Mark.

I have never felt so deeply effected by anyone moving as I have with our friends Olivia and Mark moving away from the Bay Area. I've been thinking a lot about this and I believe some of the reasons are, my older age, having children, the loss of two of our closest friends who we saw very frequently. Also, since our friend Amy just moved to Seattle in December it's a real blow to us to lose two more friends in February. I was also thinking that Olivia and Mark seem to be at the end (hopefully!) of a slow mass exodus of all of my friends from Michigan. MC and Tamiko, Suresh and Sarah, Jan was gone for awhile but thankfully he is one of the last remaining.

We will miss Mark and Olivia in a way that I am having a hard time expressing in words but when I think about it, I tear up and have to stop myself from crying.

I am however, very thankful that we had so much time together here and find it lucky that we ended up in San Francisco together for as long as we did. It's been so wonderful that many of my friends from childhood were here and we all got to get to know each other better AND we all got to know each others spouses in a way that I think most people don't get a chance to. I know that both Chad and I consider many of my high school friends very close friends. My closest friends were here to witness the beginning of my relationship with my husband, they were here for my wedding, they were here for the birth of my two children. Olivia and Mark were are closest family here and we are going to miss them so much, I know we'll be visiting them in Portland and they'll hopefully be coming here for a visit and we're already looking forward to seeing them again.