Week 26 - Belly!

One of my favorite things about having such great friends is that they, in turn, also tend to have great friends. I also love explaining how different friends have joined "the family." I say this because Jesse and I have had the fabulous fortune to become friends with Joe and Amy Rogan. Bear with me - this has something to do with the title of the post, I swear! The short story is that Amy works for Motherhood Maternity - her job is to make sure the shirts actually fit. At a recent sale, she snagged a whole bunch of super-cute, super expensive clothes for a song. The best is that two shirts in the lot were "hers." I promised to take pictures. So, you get a belly picture (and get to see how huge I've become - in a good way), and Amy gets to see her shirt in action. Win/Win! Stay tuned for more, so she can see the rest. The long story of how we're friends with the Rogans is after the jump.

Let's start at the very beginning...

I grew up across the street from Jaimee Levin (now Richardson). We've been friends for her whole life - I say that because she was born on May 4th and I was born on February 23rd, which makes me older by a whole whopping two months and change. In the 6th grade, Jaimee transferred to a different elementary school. While at the new school, she became friends with Stu Franks (who, if you were at the weddin', was my Man of Honor). I met Stu for the first time at one of Jaimee's birthday parties.

I wound up going to the same middle school and high school with Stu, and through those years we became bestest friends. He's like a brother to me, and often times we simplify it by just telling people that we're siblings. We look nothing alike, but still... people do say that we look alike when we tell them that we're related. 'Tards.

Stu went to Temple for college, and while there, was matched by the Roommate-A-Tron with Sean Petree. Stu and Sean became good friends, and if you know them both, you know that, while the Roommate-A-Tron rarely strikes gold, in this case it was a perfect match.

Sean grew up with Dave Camporeale and, you guessed it, Joe Rogan. The three of them were great friends since childhood. Stu became friends with Dave and Joe through Sean. Joe and Amy met in college, and got married shortly after graduation.

When I moved back to Philly in 2001 and became close again with Stu, I also became friends with Sean (who was again Stu's roommate), and met Dave. We became close friends, and are now like siblings as well... in fact, we have a Christmas stocking for Dave, and we refer to one of the guest rooms in our house as Dave's Room.

As Jesse and I have had parties and invited various friends, they've asked if they in turn could invite their friends. At one point, Dave asked if he could invite Joe and Amy to a party. We liked them, and they liked us, and now we're friends with them independent of Dave.

We have no pics of the Rogans, but when we get some, you can meet them too... But in the meantime, a front shot of the gorgeous shirt.