Ackert Visit

J's sister's family came to visit this us in Cleveland this weekend and we had so much fun!! There was lots of playing in Uncle Jared and Aunt Jenny's apartment, trying on Uncle Jared's high school football uniform,

playing with Aunt Jenny's iPhone camera,

pizza dinner at Dewey's, special cupcakes,

watching Disney movies, chasing Hailey with the laser, sleepovers for the oldest kiddos,
and Maggiano's dinner with Great Aunt D and Great Uncle J.

Like I said before. So much fun!!

E Town/Pittsburgh Visit

After a pile of laundry, catching up with work, an episode of Bachelor Pad (I am totally obsessed with the entire "Bachelor/Bachelorette" series I hate to admit), and attending a fashion event with J's boss and wife it was the weekend again. We headed out on a short trip 2 hours away to East Liverpool to visit our friends Charlie and Megan.

We had only one night to play where we ate Mexican food, headed to what might possibly the worlds smallest bar, and helped Charlie celebrate his birthday. A little too much celebration it seems since the next morning he was too ill to join us for the VT/Pitt game.

Unfortunately it was a loss for the Hokies, always something hard to deal with. But we rallied for dinner with Charlie, now awake after the game. We even drove by J's old place in Shadyside. It is so weird how sometimes the past seems like just yesterday and other times can seem like eons ago. When we were driving around the town it was that weird time travel feeling I get when visiting places from my past. So much the same from way back in 2004-2006 yet so different. Back then it had been so hard to be in a long distance relationship. And those days J was working, dreaming, hoping to be a surgeon... oh, how far we have come. :)

The Oregon Trail

Just two days after getting back from Virginia I was off on a girls weekend all the way to Oregon! It was Natalie, Tracey, and me just like when we traveled to Spain back in 2000 and the Bahamas in 2005. 

Tracey and I joked that this trip was us on the Oregon Trail... like the game we played in elementary school. And even though it had been a while since we had all been together, we had so much fun!

We drove over 800 miles from Friday morning until Sunday night. We started off from Tray's place in Portland and headed to Astoria where we saw the Goonies house (still don't quite get that but I didn't see the movie until I was 16), and of course we had to cross over to Washington State when we saw the signs for Cape Disappointment. 

Next was a trip down the coast where we planned to hit up some wineries and enjoy the sunshine on Cannon Beach. Unfortunately our Washington State detour took too long, the wineries were closed and a large cloud covered the beachfront. What was supposed to look like this...

was completely covered in the mist and we saw nothing but a faint outline of the water unfortunately.

After sticking our toes in the sand we headed onward to Springfield where we had dinner at Outback and crashed from jet lag and Tracey's marathon training. The next morning we drove through University of Oregon and stopped at a cute mountain village on our way to...

Crater Lake! We arrived in the early afternoon and it was BEAUTIFUL!

After lunch we took a short drive up to Sunriver and stayed with some of Tracey's west coast friends in a lovely cabin in the woods. Our last night was relaxing with wine, games, and a dinner prepared by our hosts.

On our last day we made the trek back to Portland. Off to Bend where we shopped, nearly attended a rubber duck race, and finally found an open winery on the way to Mt. Hood.

We made it back to Portland with just enough time for dinner before Natalie and I took the red eye back to the East Coast/Midwest. It was a fantastic Oregon Trail adventure!!

Last Weekend of Summer - 2012

In just our style the last unofficial weekend of the summer was spent traveling and being crazy busy. We were supposed to head out Friday as soon as we could get off work. Unfortunately J was stuck in the OR until too late for us to leave. No matter, it was his last day at Metro Hospital!! So we went out to celebrate, and planned to leave early the next morning before the sun. Our coffee stop had a great surprise with the first day of pumpkin spice lattes! Yum!

Our trip was to Virginia, obviously. ;) It was a two part trip, NoVA and Blacksburg with not enough time at either place. Julie would be in NoVA too with little Miss Madison. We spent the time playing with our niece and nephews, running errands, getting hair cuts, shopping for cars for Juls, breakfast at Yorkshire, late night Dairy Queen runs, and drinking wine by the pool with Nat and Bri (back from far far away) to top of the last nights of summer.

Then we were off to Blacksburg for the VT/GT game. They were calling for rain but we were lucky and only had a little mist during the start of the game. We didn't meet up with any friends this time, it was just us and beautiful Hokie land.

We even had an overtime victory! And just like that... summer 2012 was done.