What summer is made for

Vacations!


First up: San Francisco! Aaron's family had a reunion in San Francisco in June. The picture below is just our immediate family -- but there were about 12 others there, too. Our week in California was jam-packed with fun: Aaron's cousin Missy's graduation from UC Santa Cruz, wine tasting in Napa Valley, a Giants baseball game, Alcatraz, Muir Woods Redwood Forest and Sacramento. Probably the most talked-about portion of the trip was our excursion to Napa, which could be a blog post in itself. Let's just say that we did about 6 tastings in a 4 hour time span. I do not recommend power wine tasting. It leads to bad things, like a rental car that has a sour oder for the remainder of the trip.

The Siders family: me, Aaron, David, Linda, Sarah & Josh

Representing the KC Royals in CA

Next: Breckenridge, CO in July with my family (sans the Durbins. Much to my sister's dismay, traveling 1 month after having her third child just didn't seem like a good idea). It was a relaxing weekend in the mountains. I highly recommend Breckenridge for a laid-back vacation destination. Unless you get altitude sickness, and then I highly encourage you to avoid Breckenridge. Unfortunately for Stacey, this turned out to be the case.

The girls did lots of shopping, and the guys went fishing for a day. Aaron fell in the river while fishing. Three times. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

The Grecians: Stacey, Faith, Brent, Maci, Barb, Ken, me & Aaron
Faith and Maci provided great entertainment. In true 2-year-old fashion, Faith

asked, "What's that?" every 5 minutes, and Maci smiled. The entire week. I've

never seen such a happy baby. I'd like to pre-order a baby like that, God. Thanks.

We missed these three (four?) kiddos, though!

Petra, Blaine, a doll that mysteriously makes it into every picture Taryn is in, and Taryn.

And finally, three days after returning from Colorado, I hopped back on a plane, and went to...Colorado for the first annual 320 reunion. As an explanation of the "320", my senior year of college I lived with 6 of my best friends in a giant, disgusting house located at 320 N. 15th Street. Thus, we will forever refer to our group as the "320 girls".

We decided last year at Jessie's wedding that we needed to get together for a weekend away, in which our purpose would be to catch up rather than to attend a wedding ceremony. Since 3 of the 7 of us live in Colorado (unfortunately, I'm not one of them!) and Allyson's aunt-in-law has a cabin in Winter Park, it seemed like a perfect (and inexpensive!) location for our reunion. We spent the entire weekend catching up and reminiscing about the good 'ol days at K-State. There were moments in which we reverted back to the level of maturity that we had when we were 19, but that's all I'll say about that. We definitely never ran out of anything to talk - or laugh - about.

Abby, Megan, Jenny, Allyson

Emily, Jessie and me

All that traveling left me no time to blog! Just kidding. I knew it was inevitable. I did so good for several months, and now it's official: I'm a once-a-month blogger. How is it that I had more to write about when I did nothing but work, study, and sleep?