Update from the Jersey Shore

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. 

Stonewall Jackson

Skyelr is a Civil War nerd.

Most delicious ice cream this side of the Mississippi, maybe this side of the world. 

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!).

Flying to SLC from SMF.  Mostly I like this picture cause I love my sunglasses.

Skyelr and I kayaking the American River

Hanging out with my sisters-in-law at the Baird Ranch

All those Bairds!

Post-river running--we survived!

Longboarding Provo Canyon

The coolest of the cool.

This is what we miss seeing here in New Jersey

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.

Forrest celebrated his birthday with us.

At the Cape May County Zoo

Forrest's birthday breakfast--waffles and ice cream

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!

Just Like You Imagined

We recently took a trip out to California and Utah.  While in California we spent one of our days going down the American River.  We had way too many photos for this one blog post so I compiled a little slide show of highlights.  Hope you enjoy!

-Skyelr

Marin and Nick visit the East Coast

Hahaha, so, funny story:  remember when I said over a month ago that in the near future I'd be posting more pics of that trip Marin and Nick took out here?  Well, I've finally gotten around to it.  A month counts as near future, right?  I am actually inspired by my older sister who manages to post updates about her family at least two or three times a month.  So here goes, I'm getting off my butt (actually, that's a lie, I am definitely sitting down to write this blog post) and posting a bunch of pics from more than a month ago!

So--our journey started out in Philadelphia, because that's the largest airport closest to Cape May.  Skyelr and I picked up Marin and Nick and drove down to Alexandria, VA, where we had a splendid sleepover with Bryan, Jessica, and Danny!  The next morning we got started on our sightseeing.  We did a whirlwind fast tour of the highlights of the area all in one day.   

 We started out at the NRA, of course, in Fairfax, VA.  We saw their amazing firearms collection, which included (and this one was my favorite) a pistol with carved silver bullets designated for killing vampires, Annie Oakley's gun (or at least one of them), and lots of other cool stuff. 

On the banks of the Potomac with the Washington Monument in the background.

 Then, after lunch in the NRA courtyard, we went to Washington, D.C. (Everyone around here calls it "Washington" but I find that confusing, growing up in the west nearer Washington state, so I have to call it "D.C." like my western heritage dictates.)

Skyelr took stroller duty.

He's a natural!

 We took a quick stop by the Jefferson memorial to refill our water bottles and then moved on to the Smithsonians--we picked the museum of American History.

Skyelr and a huey, his favorite kind of helicopter.

C-3PO, human-cyborg relations.

Hangin' out just outside the museum

 After a few hours in the Smithsonian we started our tour of the memorials.  We hit up the Washington, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Lincoln, and FDR memorials before heading home in separate cars--more on that story later!

Walking up to the Washington memorial...

And Marin and Nick are the coolest of cool.

Flags surrounding the W-mem.

Skyelr became Danny's new best friend.

WWII memorial

The whole gang at the Vietnam memorial

This is the view from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Unfortunately, the reflection pool was drained.

 So, to add to our adventurous story, after the FDR memorial Skyelr and I found ourselves driving home by ourselves.  In the spirit of adventure, we decided to forgo the GPS.  (I mean, people have been living without GPS for centuries, right?  Nobody's been permanently lost in any big city as far as I know.)  We ended up getting very lost indeed, but coincidentally found ourselves at Skyelr's favorite of the memorials in the area--the Marine Iwo Jima memorial.  After some photos we found our way back to Bryan and Jessica's home.

 The next morning we stopped by the memorial again to show it to Marin and Nick on our way back north.  We then drove to Philadelphia to hit up some more national symbols--the Liberty bell and Independence Hall.

You can see why I married him, can't you? ;)

Philadelphia, PA, walking to see the liberty bell.  And yes, I did put this pic of Skye up on purpose 'cause of that face.

That's it!  That is the Liberty Bell.  Neat-O!

Skyelr in front of Independence Hall (unfortunately under construction).

 The next two days of the trip we spent in our hometown (for now) of Cape May, NJ.  We loved showing Marin and Nick around downtown.

 

The end!  I made it to the end of the blog and so did you!  Congrats!  I have a whole other trip to detail out and post up... in the near(ahem) future...