Midwest Adventures

Hookay, the much anticipated vacation blog post. After all, what could we have possibly been doing running around the midwest for 12 days? 

Started out in Valparaiso, Indiana for Joel & Jessica's wedding. Which was a lovely excuse for a mid-year family get together. We all spent the weekend pal-ing (is that a word?) about the hotel, swimming, eating, hanging out and being waited on attentively by the concierge who insisted that we all needed to eat more cookies and drink more water. The wedding itself was beautiful (the chapel is seen below) despite the crazy heat! Man that place was hot. After a boatload of pictures, we all drove over to a restaurant near the hotel for the reception which included lots and lots of dancing! 

The day after the wedding we piled back in the car and drove 4 hours to Michigan to meet with the volleyball head coach and tour campus -- a schedule to which we were about to become quite accustom to. 

Monday night after seeing Michigan we drove...err, snacked... 4 hours to Chicago to eat some pizza. Oh yeah, we were there for more than just the food. Tuesday morning we woke up and ate some pancakes. Right, right.. after that we drove to Northwestern and visited with the volleyball coach and toured the gym and what not. Seeing a pattern?

After meeting with the coach on Tuesday we drove 4 hours to Bloomington Indiana to eat pizza... Except that plan failed since Mama Bear's pizza was apparently "closing early for unexpected summer cleaning". Jimmy John's turned out to be an acceptable alternative. Wednesday morning we woke up and met with the coach at Indiana... pattern continuing. Apparently we're creatures of habit. Food, meet, drive.. 

Wednesday afternoon we piled back in the car and drove 3.5 hours to Ohio. Thursday consisted of.. coach, meet, tour, ask questions.. you know the usual. It's old hat by now. After that we got back in the car... oh wait no, we stayed the night! Two nights in one place!! 

Friday morning we woke up and drove to Kentucky for some good old horse racing... i mean roller derbying. Actually Sarah had a 4 day volleyball tournament there. It was really nice though because Grandpa & Frances were able to come up and rescue me from the insanity!! Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But we did manage to get away and check out some fossils and a 7 story wooden bat. We even got matching tattoos (Grandpa insisted) and hung out at a local irish pub. (Apparently I have not loaded these pictures yet, so check back later!)

We're done now..

Kay, guys.. that's enough. We'd like a break now...

As the quarter is winding down.. so are we. Tonight has shown that we're pretty much all ready for a 2 week breather. Not that everyone is sick of each other but it would be nice for a, you know, change of pace. I'm still really, really happy here but I'm looking forward to not having to deal with classes, homework, extra stress, etc. 

Guess it's bedtime now. 

comic from toothpastefordinner.com

The Long Awaited Post

Vacation was excellent. Eight days, seven nights. We couldn't have felt any further from home-- in a good way, of course. For those who don't know, my family along with some family friends (our dad's met through work a long time ago and we've been friends ever since) went down to Bald Head Island it's the furthest point off the coast of North Carolina. This is no ordinary island. Unlike the rest of modern civilization, there are no cars. Instead golf carts is the preferred way of travel and that satisfies pretty much everyone, including the dog. To get there it's about a 7 hour drive (leaving at 4:30am) and we arrived at the Ferry Station around noon. Parked the cars, unloaded everything and then said goodbye to the mainland as we boarded the Ferry. Our friends own a condo in Bald Head so we all stayed there.

Now you'll have to bear with me. If I were to recall each and every solitary detail of our vacation you would probably be sitting here reading for the next 72 hours or so and it might take me right up until the day I have to leave for college to write it. So as to not waste your time and mine, i'll sum up the rest and use pictures (which pretty much speak for themselves. Eventually I hope to get an album up on picsaweb so you should be able to access the rest of my pictures. I've also started loading them on flickr.. Let me just tell you it takes FOREVER to deal with 520 pictures. I might not get around to some until Christmas :)




We spent much of the week in some body of water or another, between our afternoon beach runs and four hour long pool sessions. Luckily, even with my pasty white skin I managed to never get sunburned-- amazing, huh? I even got the slightest tan on my shoulders. Managed to finish the only 3 books I had brought by midweek so I was left to find other things to do with my time... which mostly involved zipping around the island in a golf cart. We ate lots of watermelon, pizza at the pool and the occasional late night brownie snack. Okay, so we did eat healthy food too. The easiest way to plan meals for the beach is to just bring food from home so we brought fixings for burritos, hot dogs (not for me), chicken, pasta salad, etc. Since there is no direct route to the island other than the ferry it makes things pretty expensive.

(marina-- down by where the ferry comes in)

(the parents before our dinner at the club)

(taylor, sarah and i... yeah we just gave up trying to do our hair all week, it always got messed up in the pool or in a golf cart)

(sarah and i on one of our golf cart outings)

(dad and sarah at the beach)

(picture taken from the car on the way home, i thought the sky looked pretty :)

We're Baaaackkkk

Got home late last night.

In short, we had a great time. I have 520 pictures. They are taking forever to sort through. Just wanted to let you all know I hadn't forgotten-- just give me a little time to finish a big update :)

Adios Amigos

Waking up at 4 am tomorrow morning to head off to Bald Head Island for the week, back sometime Saturday night (8/2).  Not bringing a computer so expect a large update at the end of the week. 

When I get back i'll know who my roommate is for sure! And where i'm living next year! Yay! Right now there appear to be some complications with this so hope for the best :) 

Arrivederci, Toodleloo and Ciao.