East Coast Vacation Part 2

And the trip continues! We left off on Monday with me teaching Mom's classes. She said she felt up to teaching the next day so we kept our plan to head up to the cabin Tues-Thurs. This time we finally decided to take a little detour and check out the Yeungling Brewery in Pottsville that is on the way. Well worth it. Although, forewarning, it was 1,000,000 degrees in the factory parts. I mean, ridiculously hot. Definitely made the sampling part of the tour at the end even more delicious.

These caves were carved out with pick axes, they couldn't use explosives. For such an immense network of caves, it was really impressive. And you could see the left over brick wall sections that were put up during prohibition.

This was upstairs where the actual brewing takes place. They had just finished for the day and it was extremely hot. The stained glass ceiling was put in because the original ceiling just magnified the sun streaming in, making it even more unbearable for the workers.

Outside was the canning area and it was so much nicer (temperature wise). The cans whizzing by are cans of Lite Lager. Fun fact, Yeungling doesn't water down their light beer.

The building across the way used to be an ice cream company created by Yeungling to produce profit during prohibition. Sadly, very sadly, this building is going to be torn down. I can't believe no one wanted to save it or repair it. I understand it must be expensive, but honestly, what a great old building - what a waste!

A couple of naps later... (at least on my part!)

Hello Cabin, it's been far too long! 

At one point I was reading on the hammock and I look over to see Ed creeping around the shoreline with some equipment - a machete and a rake. Turns out he was on the hunt for a snake that was swimming along the edge. Fella got away but I'm sure he and Ed will meet again.

The next day we were pretty socked in with fog the first half of the day...

But then miraculously - much like Kim's wedding, it all cleared, granting us one really nice half day.

My least favorite part of the cabin.... spiders.

Funny story, we were clearing a debris pile. I was helping because I wanted to be, well, helpful! And not just read all day on the hammock. So I'm helping, and everything is going well, until Ed grabs a branch and pulls it away revealing the LARGEST spider I have ever seen in my entire life. In person. In the wild. Outside of a zoo enclosure. I was so stunned with fear that I dropped everything, inhaled in fear, and started jumping up and down. I couldn't say a word. Ed - who had earlier seen that snake remember? - immediately paused and tried to get me to verbalize what I saw that was probably about to take him down. When he found out it was a spider he shrugged it off and then sent me to go read again. :) Later! I was validated when he saw the same spider at the bottom of the pile and agreed, it was a scarily large spider, and the largest he had seen up there.  Mhm. Never sleeping again. I would try to find you a picture of it, but let's be honest, neither of us needs to look at those kinds of pictures.

Thursday we made our way back to MD. The rest of the trip is a little foggy at this point. We went to see Michelle's performance in Ragtime at Kensington Arts Theater (which was wonderful - I hope you and Houdini know I wasn't just saying that!) and then had a little late night snack at IHOP. So many memories of Jekyll & Hyde at KAT and high school memories from IHOP! The next thing I remember is that we were on our way to get Carolyne on Saturday! It was a big surprise that she was coming in early so we just told Mom we were going to get El Pollo Rico and that we would be right back...

She was very happily surprised. Ed got a scolding from Mom for keeping secrets from her. Apparently that's only something daughters are allowed to do! :)

We went out for a night of karaoke and it was a chaotic wonderful evening. I can't believe this is the only picture I have from the night... but I do remember there was a lot of talking to people and singing and dancing and maybe even some tassels? :) It was a great, great evening. You guys, you friends and family, have no idea how much we miss you and how much more we miss you when we have nights like that.

In fact, I know I have one other picture from that night but it's stolen from Lizzy. So... thanks for posting it Lizzy :) If you didn't know, Lizzy and I have secret powers where when we're together we can take amazing pictures.

You see what not drinking does? It makes me turn bright pink from 2 beers. Oh flush face.

We (deliriously) made our way up to Gettysburg to see Omi early the next morning so we didn't get caught in Rolling Thunder traffic. Ed wasn't sure if he was going to be in town for the baby shower so this was his one chance to stop in and say hello.

The remainder of Sunday was spent doing some baby shower planning and then packing because Ed and I flew out early the following morning.

Oh Dulles, you are becoming like second nature to me now.

It was a wonderful 10 days and seeing so many good friends... in Alexandria, Silver Spring, Gettysburg and Virginia Beach. Thank you all for making time to hang out, we miss you more than we can say!

P.S. Happy day for same sex marriage supporters! Congratulations to all of us for starting to get things right. And on that note, hallelujah that measure in Texas also failed! Seems like a great Wednesday to me.

East Coast Vacation Part 1

Oh so much to cover! I divided our trip into two sections because it was just so manic, it'd be way too much to cover in one post. Also, this will be mostly pictures because sadly, as I feared, I've forgotten a great deal of the little details and stories of our trip.

Ed loves red eye flights!

Thursday we came in and basically just ran around the entire day. I went in to see Mikyla at The Shop in Bethesda to get my hair trimmed for the wedding that weekend. We even got to meet up with Michelle for lunch. One shopping trip and manicure/pedicure later, we had wrapped up our day of errands and could settle in with Mom.

Scheming!

We bought Omi an iPad mini, hoping it's lightweight nature would be more appealing to her than her fullsized iPad. (Long story short, she didn't touch it in the two weeks she had it so it managed to find it's way into my luggage!)

The next morning we started our drive down to Virginia Beach, listening to A Visit from the Goon Squad on audiobooks. Traffic was... epic. Every single major road had some kind of awful traffic and it was truly ridiculous. Rush hour turned into a day long event apparently. We saw some truly awful car crash aftermath so it must have just been something in the air...

We made it to the beach house in time for dinner with Mel and Brian which was a nice little break. Also, I wish we could have stayed a bit longer, the house Mel picked out was pretty awesome and I badly longed for more east coast beach time. I know, I know, I'm not a 'beach person' per se, but I have so many fond memories of visiting Rehoboth that I just get super nostalgic.

Kim's wedding was the next day and because it was on the beach (and raining) I opted to try my hand at a fishtail braid for the first time. Mikyla gave me these nifty hair ties that are bungee cords. If you're looking for something that refuses to budge, this is the product for you!

Finished product. I brought my denim blouse in case it got a little too wet and windy.

Miraculously the rain lifted for the ceremony and it was wonderful. Everyone looked fantastic and the set up was beautiful. Hard to go wrong with beach weddings as long as the weather cooperates!

I forgot to take pictures but there were two other weddings happening along side ours. The mother of the bride told me later they worked out a timing arrangement with them so no one would be disrupted. 

Like I said, the rain held off for the ceremony, and then started in promptly for the reception.

But that didn't stop the dancing! 

Kim's reception dress was wonderful, and she wore a ka-bar (?) knife on a sash.

The food? So good. I wish I had taken a picture of the dinner because it was just great. Dessert was wonderful too, wedding cake and little apple pies! After months of dieting, I was pretty much completely done in with all this eating.

The site they used was amazing, we're talking indoor and outdoor pools, multi-level massive rooms, and an elevator? It was ridiculously nice.

All of the 'buds' got together for a toast or two:

The photographer here, Jamie, would also be one of the people toasting but she was working and expecting - two conditions not great for drinking!

And then it went a little bit crazy after this picture. It was still a great night but yeah, just a little bit crazy as expected. :)

The next morning we had to roll out early to make our way to Rob's graduation. Ok, maybe it wasn't early... but when you have a 3am bedtime, 9am comes up a little too quick. We met up with Susan on the way, forming a little caravan on the way to George Mason for the ceremony.

Everything was very nice and the ceremony went by really quickly. I'm a jerk and did not take nearly enough pictures. I can't believe I didn't even get Rob on stage getting hooded! I did try to cheer a little but got the stink eye from a neighbor in the audience. Oh well! It was a wonderful moment, recognizing a huge accomplishment.

Susan, Ellis and Rob posing in the crush of graduates and families rushing around 

Rob, Alexis and Ellis - all happy and... blurry. Ugh, I don't know what happened. Such a good picture and all three I took came out blurry. Photographer fail.

Unfortunately we were not able to stay for dinner - I had received a call that morning that my mom had fallen down the stairs and was hurting. Mom said she was mostly okay but that she hit her head and knee and wasn't moving around much at all, so we knew we had to make it back to try to help her out. She did send us out to get dinner after we helped set her up and determined that I would teach for her on Monday so we decided staying close and going to Quarry House was a good option.

Seriously. How come I got such a blurry picture of Rob, Alexis and Ellis - and here I get a great burger picture? So frustrating.

So the next day I taught the 830, 930 and 11 to the amusement and confusion of the students. Several of them thought I was my mom when they viewed me from across the pool. They all said marriage appeared to be treating me well and were disappointed to learn that the secret to my weight loss was diet and exercise :)

Ed suggested we go out for lunch and what tastes better after working out for 3 hours than Moby Dick's sushi!

So that covers Thursday - the first Monday of our trip.... one week's worth of activities and pictures left!

(Side note - Mom is alright now, she just needed some time to heal after the fall)