WOAH!! She's blogging again?!?!?!? That, like, NEVER happens!
Ok, so, here's how behind I am: I have two vacations to chronicle, and the oldest is from July. We have had several visits from family, we're hoping for more, and that's just the big events. Our keen followers may be forever in the dark about our trip to VA.
So I think I'll just kinda give a very short glossing over of the events of this summer and be all caught up for fall.
So, our trip in July was a fantastic adventure to Buena Vista, VA. Skyelr spent a couple of summers here as a kid, so he was my tour guide. We stopped by some Civil War sites (of course) and toured the beautiful town of Lexington, VA, which is right next to Buena Vista. We slept in the car some nights, a campground some nights, and slept over at Bryan and Jessica's house on our way back home. It was exciting! My three top favorite parts of the trip were: 1) eating ice cream from Sweet Things. They had homemade honeydew melon flavored ice cream. 2) watching the final Harry Potter movie at a quaint theatre in Lexington. 3) taking a spur-of-the-moment detour to the national D-day memorial, which was actually super cool.
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| Stonewall Jackson |
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| Skyelr is a Civil War nerd. |
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| Most delicious ice cream this side of the Mississippi, maybe this side of the world. |
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| At the D-day memorial |
The major event in August for me was I was the director of our stake's girls camp. Yup, I was in charge of the whole thing. I wore my cowboy hat so people knew I meant business and did inordinate amounts of tromping around in my hiking boots. I had a blast and I think that the girls all did, too. It was awesome!
Then in the beginning of September Skyelr took a week off and we went "out west where [we] belong". Our first stop was sunny California where we had a Baird family reunion at the Baird family ranch. I made friends with some chickens, went white-water kayaking, and bought a long-sleeved Sacramento T-shirt at the airport cause I forgot a jacket. Then we flew to Utah, where we visited with family, hung out with good friends, and ate at all the best spots in Provo, including J-Dawgs (2x!), Hot Dog King (where they treat you like a king--best customer service EVER), and Kneaders (Let's hear it for that french toast!).
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| Flying to SLC from SMF. Mostly I like this picture cause I love my sunglasses. |
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| Skyelr and I kayaking the American River |
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| Hanging out with my sisters-in-law at the Baird Ranch |
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| All those Bairds! |
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| Post-river running--we survived! |
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| Longboarding Provo Canyon |
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| The coolest of the cool. |
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| This is what we miss seeing here in New Jersey |
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| Hiking Battle Creek with my parents |
And that brings us to the month of October. We're only a third of the way through the month and we've already had Forrest (Skyelr's youngest brother) out here for a couple of weeks, Forrest and I went swimming in the Atlantic, which was warm, but the wind sure wasn't when we got out, and celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving because hey, why not? And just because it was such a noteworthy meal, let me describe the Thanksgiving dinner to you: BEST GRAVY EVER. (Sorry to my dear dad who makes wonderfully delicious gravy every Thanksgiving; we kinda cheated.) We cooked up a turkey breast roast in the crock pot with a gravy packet that came with the roast and a can of cream of chicken soup. Skye added the right amount of spices and voila! It was delicious. I made (and burned) a pumpkin pie (maybe the burning wasn't my fault--I used leftover frozen pie dough and there wasn't quite enough so the crust was thin and cracked to begin with...) and we whipped up some garlic mashed potatoes that were dreamy. And Skyelr made himself some stove top stuffing, but I don't like stuffing so I didn't eat any. And, just since my mom asked, the canned cranberry sauce was fine, but a little gelatinous, but the rest of the meal made up for any deficiency in the cranberry department.
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| Forrest celebrated his birthday with us. |
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| At the Cape May County Zoo |
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| Forrest's birthday breakfast--waffles and ice cream |
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| Forrest at the beach. We decided the water was warm enough to swim and went back later |
Well, TTFN! You might hear from me again, but no promises!
