In keeping with the weekend theme

First of all, thank you to all of you who commented and followed me yesterday, I really appreciate it!  If you're not following my blog I'd love to have you join!

I'm off to the beach this morning so don't have a whole lot of time to write a long post but wanted to share this youtube in case you haven't seen it.  In keeping with the 4th of July theme and riding bikes (which to me is a big part of the 4th and the parades) check out this little boy after he accomplishes riding a bike for the first time, it will be sure to make you smile :)

Do you remember the first time you successfully rode a bike?  Wasn't it the greatest feeling in the world?  

4th of July, oh so soon!

So I'm starting to get EVER so excited about 4th of July and I thought I'd spend this semi-wordless Wednesday talking about it in pictures!




So, here it goes...
My whole life (minus the summers I was at summer camp and in England) I have spent 4th of July in Bethany Beach, DE.  As a child we used to dress up and ride our bikes in the parade and as we got older we had family floats in the parade:

Each year we would have a different "theme", the picture above the theme was Yes "surrey" cruisin' right into the 21st century. 

Since graduating college and being back in the mid-atlantic I have made it a priority to go to the beach for the 4th:

Cousin Jess and I watching the parade

Our floats were so much better

Watching the fireworks on the beach

Last summer my cousin Lexi who was living down with my grandmother decided to go all out and pull out some of the old 4th of July decorations and thus our theme last year was...

Last year the parade was not on 4th of July so we had our own parade around my grandmother's neighborhood...

decorating bikes

preparing for the parade

My grandmother informed me last night that this years throwback theme was wacky tacky family vacation...back in about 1996 we had this same theme and our float was one of the old cars which we called the "bomber" and all over it we threw toys and junk, we even put a kayak on top and had a child sit in it...wish I had some pics of that!  All that said, we won 1st place that year and the float was in the paper!  

Anyway, really looking forward to one of my favorite holidays and spending it with family.  The only thing we'll be missing is 2 of my siblings who I will miss terribly...

What traditions do you celebrate for the 4th?  Have any great plans?  Would love to hear what your up to!

Southern Adventure!

Well hello blog world!  Sorry for the week long break, I've been busy touring the south and while I did try to put up posts last week for some reason I was having some technical difficulties...but alas, I'm back!

Anyway, I had a wonderful time on my southern adventure and was able to hit many different spots on my trip!  I started in the booming metropolis of Easley, South Carolina:

Right after I snapped this pic the town was over...
it's that small!

Then we headed to Hilton Head for my dear friend Gini's Bachelorette party:

Picking out supplies

Buckets we made for the guests

Dinner out to celebrate Gini!

Crazy friends :)

The Bachelorette party was a blast and it was so much fun being back in HH (we had gone there for spring break one year in college).  We just hung by the beach, caught up, played silly games and relaxed...it was lovely and I got rid of my tan lines (I know I know that sounds dumb but I was wearing a strapless dress for the wedding the next weekend so I needed help).  

Anyway, after Hilton Head I headed down to Atlanta to stay with friends and it was lots of fun.  I got to meet Gini's new puppy (I can't believe I didn't get a pic of him!) and went to my very first Braves game!

Braves Game! 

After a wonderful and relaxing Birthday (wasn't exactly excited as now I'm getting old) I headed to Nashville and then to Sewanee to celebrate my wonderful sorority big sister and her now husband Pat, what a fun wedding it was.  It was wonderful being back in Sewanee and visiting with a few of my other close friends.

pre-wedding bbq

back at our fave place, Shenan's!!

grooms cake - the KA house!

are MK and I bridesmaids or is Lindsey??

The lovely couple heading out :)

Favorite view - Greens View

All in all it was a wonderful trip filled with lots of visits with great friends!  That said I was exhausted and glad to get home to my warm and cozy bed.  Now I'm back in Baltimore before I head to the beach for the 4th, I can't WAIT!  The 4th is one of my favorite holidays...more to come on that soon!

Sorry for the lack of posts this week...

So I tried to blog yesterday but had some technical issues...anyway, I've been down south for the past week and haven't had much of a chance to get back in blog world! Promise I'll be back in full force next week with stories from my southern adventure...yup 11 states in 1 month!

Have a great weekend ( I know I will as I'll be at Sewanee for my sorority big sisters' wedding!!)

We made it to Colorado!

Ok so I'm still catching up on posts but this will be my last one from Tighe and I's roadtrip west!  Well we got out of the B and B and headed on to our final destination...the only problem was we had to go through the mountains...major mountains.  It was ok though, Budgy did a great job and so did Tighe (I didn't drive the whole leg...whoops!).  We stopped in Vail for lunch, such a cute ski town!  Tighe and I had been there with our family when we were younger but didn't remember it very well.  We walked around and had a lovely lunch outside (much better then any of our meals in Palisades...).  We then really got into the mountains and we were pretty much riding up and down until we got to Boulder.  The wildest part was how much snow was still on mountains and how HIGH the Colorado river was...take a look:

Vail, so cute!

Even though I'm not at KaBOOM! anymore, still always noticing playground :)
(this one was super cool, a pirate ship!)

The Colorado River was so high!

So much snow still!

...and that's what we drove into

After about four or five hours we finally made it to...

It was so exciting to finally get there!  And Budgy did such a great job...

Good ole' Budgy, miss that truck...well kinda

Tighe's apartment is cute and we had a great time exploring Boulder and getting her all set up, what a cool little city!  Some of the highlights were walking out of her apartment and hiking up the mountains, Pearl street and Kitchen (restaurant we loved).  Here are a few pics of some of our hikes:

So beautiful...definitely missing the west and my dear little sister (although she is doing GREAT things and is about to start her own adventure in the blog world!!)  Now I'm down south for the next 10 days...a southern adventure :)  More to come soon, thanks for reading along!

THE FINAL DAYS

Now we are finally into our final days of our roadtrip...at least in my storytellling, in real life I am already back in Baltimore, oh well, I want to make sure I document this trip so I can remember it so I am making sure to put every part in!

Anyway, on Sunday after we saw the elk, we got all packed up and headed out for a long day of travel.  We had to get from the Grand Canyon to Palisades, Colorado so it was a bit of a long day through lots of mountains and deserts.  We got on the road and were a little nervous because we had to go back through the area where Budgy had started doing weird things.  Tighe took it really slow though and Budgy did a great job, go Budgy!  It was a nice way to exit the Canyon as we continued to see views for about an hour or two into our drive.

Beautiful view further out from the touristy part of the Canyon

From there we spent most of the rest of the day traveling through Arizona and Utah and boy did we see some neat sites...

It was wild to see these random rock mounds just in the middle of the otherwise flat desert.

Buddha rock with the white cap mountains in the distance

Then we made it over to Moab and Arches National Park, we drove right through it!  We thought about stopping but really just wanted to get to our next stop plus we were listening to The Hunger Games on itunes (children's book but is extremely intense and a great listen for a roadtrip!) so we didn't stop.  Definitely a spot to go to next time though!

Eight hours, 3 states, and many different terrains later, we made it to Palisades, CO...and boy was it interesting.  Tighe had booked us in a little B & B there and after a quick glance at the website I thought it would be fine (we've stayed in lots of Inns before so I figured it would be the same).  WELL, I was quite wrong.  We pulled up and it was just a person's house with basically a guest bedroom, so strange.  I was exhausted though and all I wanted was a shower so we pulled in and said hello and headed up to our room (which had NO door on the bathroom...weird).  

Our lovely room...I think the comforter gave me a rash

Vistas and Vineyards...a joke

Anyway, we came back down and they were having a "concert" it was so awkward and all we wanted to do was relax after eight hours of driving.  We took the owners bikes and headed into town to get away from it all and have dinner.  Well, after being on the road about five minutes Tighe stopped suddenly and I fell off my bike...just another addition to our lovely time spent in Palisades, CO.  There was NOWHERE to go to dinner so we finally found this country cafe place and sat ourselves down to eat.  After dinner we headed back to our lovely B & B and had to sit there while they had the concert and then very quickly excused ourselves to the room where little kids were knocking on our door and then running away.

To say the least, we got out of there quickly in the morning and headed on the road to our final stop...Boulder, CO.  More to come on my time in Colorado tomorrow...hope you're still enjoying our roadtrip adventure!

Day 4: Grand Canyon, part 2

Soo after we finished our water break we headed down Bright Angel trail...

It was a pretty steep hike down to the first rest stop but it was really neat to see the different views as you went down into the Canyon.  Tighe and I tried to take it slow as not to mess up our knees too much!  On the way down we even met a group that went to Sewanee and lives in Tullahoma now...YSR!  

Hiking down the Canyon

We made it to the rest stop and had lunch and then began the trek back up...it was pretty steep so we took it nice and slow!

I have to to say it...and Tighe's prob going to kill me for it...but I was SO proud of Tighe for hiking all the way back up!  Who would of thought that a year and a half after all that happened to her she would be able to hike the Grand Canyon, YOU GO GIRL!!  So honored to have gotten to be the one that got to hike with her :)

Inspiration...HOPE STRENGTH LOVE

Anyway, we made it to the top and although we were a little beat we were ecstatic that we did it!

Woohoo!  The rest of the day we spent walking around and checking out different views of the Canyon...until Budgy had a bit of an issue.  We were going up and down some hills and Budgy started to go into a bit of overdrive and it seemed like the brakes were sticking...we were freaked considering we had to go through Arizona, Utah and then Colorado in the next 2 days.  So after about 5 hours waiting for the truck repair man at about 10 he finally came and checked out the car.  Luckily it was ok and after a few small tweaks Budgy was as good as new.  

We made it back to our campsite, where we had pulled the futon out and put it under us to make the tent more comfy (thank god!!) and drifted off to sleep.  We got up early the next morning and what did we see out side out our tent...

An elk!  Literally right outside of our tent just hanging out...it was neat!  Anyway, after that we got ourselves packed up and headed out for another long day of driving...more to come on that soon!