Going Down The Rabbit Hole

This weekend just gone, celebrated the 21st birthday of a guy that use to swim with me. During the real prime of my time as a competitive swimmer, there was a core group of around 8 of us that were committed to the sport 100%, were at every single session, spent all our time in and out of the pool together and really pushed each other for a good 6 years or so. We had multiple trips away together to state and national competitions. It's safe to say we knew each other pretty well.

This guy one of the first of our little group to call it quits. He started to get into his work more and more and ended up becoming a FIFO worker. Due to his schedule, I haven't really had too many opportunities to catch up with him, so when his invitation to his 21st arrived...so excited.

Birthday boy was really the baby of the group even through we were all of very similar ages. He was the year below me in school, but because I'm born in February and he is in December, I am almost 2 years older then him. It feels like my 21st was so long ago, and the baby is finally catching up.

The party theme was Alice in Wonderland and was held in his mum's backyard. His older sister is a florist by trade but has started getting into more event décor and planning and did an AMAZING job of decorating the party space....seriously amazing. As soon as you walked through the garden gate you felt like you were at the Mad Hatters Tea Party. There were cups and clocks and empty bird cages strung from the trees, completely random objects put together in the most interesting ways that just made sense....sooo cool!!

And what was even better then the décor, was having the crew back together again, in one place at one time...coaches included. It was like no time had passed at all. So really I'm thankful for two things here today. Getting to catch up with a  great group of people who know far too much about each other and have done things that are completely normal for swimmers, but absolutely bizarre for the rest of the world (eg shave each others legs)! And the creativity of the very talented lady who put together such an amazing set up in just a regular suburban backyard.