Visiting with family and friends

After the wedding Tim and I decided to accompany
Tim's parents to the place where we had been married

Mount Pollux conservation area. It was truly a beautiful day.
I think it's always beautiful there.

We had a very nice picnic and enjoyed the view, the quiet, and the fresh air for a bit.
That evening we prepared for a trip to see Lindsay and Casey and meet their new baby Orin.
That meant finishing the blanket I had been knitting as a gift...

As you can see I had apparently miscalculated a bit. Oops!
However, after revision it was well recieved. Yay!
Not only was it great to finally present the gift I had been working on for months,
It was also wonderful to meet the beautiful baby that was the reason behind the gift.

He was sooooooooo cute.

Tim was a real natural with him too. Hmm.

The happy Zawicki family! Orin, Casey, and Lindsay.

And then it was back to CT to do some work.
Tim and I (mostly Tim) worked on refinishing my parents Kitchen floor.
This is the before picture. You'll have to stop by to see the after.
We forgot to take a picture of it.
We were so busy visiting more friends.

This is Mason, my friend Shelly's baby. He was born while we were in SF.
Another cutie pie. (sorry it's sideways)

And Emaline, Mason's big sister, has grown soooo much since I saw her last.
I was the first to teach her how to use crayons.
And now look, she's moved onto mixed media artwork. I'm so proud!

Next up is Martha's Vineyard, a boatload of beaches and a wicked sunburn.

Richard and Virginia's Wedding

After crossing the border in Michigan we stayed one night in what would now be our home. Unpacked the car and headed out back onto the road. We were scheduled to be at a wedding in CT on July 5th and it was presently the Fourth of July! So we crossed the border again...
All went smoothly and we were on our way. As it got dark we were able to see several sets of fireworks. No pics though because well...it was too dark.

DONG! DONG! DONG!
Are those wedding bells I hear?

Congratulations Rich and Ginny. It was a beautiful wedding!

For those of you who don't know, Ginny is my mother's best friend's daughter. Essentially she's like a cousin. I'm pretty close with most of my cousins and it was wonderful to watch her get married.

Tim and I also had the pleasure of meeting Krishna, my sister Emilie's boyfriend. They just recently celebrated 1 year together! Yay Emilie and Krishna!
So...we made it to our destination, saw family, had a great time, ate some fantastic food, and overall enjoyed the evening.

But our journey in the states has just begun. We can still look forward to a week on Martha's Vinyard, a cristening, and more visiting with family before heading back to Canada to settle in some more.

Cross Country Part 3

Evidence that I DID drive part of the way and that we had a fantastic time!
I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
Still in Yellowstone more errie evidence showing the past fires.
As we left Yellowstone we drove through this gorgeous, well...gorge.

I was under the impression that other than Yellowstone there was nothing really worthwhile in Wyoming. Boy was I wrong. Granted there isn't much in the way of civilization but who needs that when you can have unhindered views like this!

I wish I knew the name of this fantastic and welcoming town that we happened upon but I cannot remember. All I know is that a fantastic lunch in she shade after driving in the hot hot hot sun was really really great. We stopped to buy ice for our cooler at a convinience store on the main street. Assuming there wasn't much else to the town we, we were making sandwiches on the hood of the car. We were kindly informed of a picnic area nearby which also had a public POOL!
What a pool! We didn't have the energy or time to dig out our suits from in the perfectly packed car. So we sat on the edge and dipped our feet, hands, arms, whatever we could and then went back out onto the road.

To discover large green fields and empty roads. We were now in South Dakota.

But wait...there's more to South Dakota than fields and old barns.

There are presidents!

Huge Presidents! I found Mount Rushmore to be very impressive. All that rock and work carved into a mountain. Pretty cool.

What's also cool is helping ourselves to an East Coast favorite we had been deprived of for quite some time. Thick crust Pizza Hut pizza! YUMMMMMMM! Besides fields, barns, and pizza hut there are also hundreds of signs for the Wall Drug Store! We had to go and see what it was all about.
Our night time general store stop included a 5cent coffee for Tim and a pair of VERY attractive clip on sunglasses for me. Sorry South Dakota but I wasn't impressed. However, we could drive quite a bit faster there than we could once we hit Minnesota, Wisconsin or Illinois.
As we entered Illinois we were planning on finding a campsite since it wasn't too late at night. So much for that. We hit a mosterous thunder storm and had to stay at another hotel. It was our first REAL thunder storm since we left the East Coast. They don't have thunder storms in CA. The next day we set off for the last stretch of our trek to the border. Around Lake Michigan, through Indiana, through Michigan and into CANADA!!!!

OH CANADA!!!

Stay tuned for more about our summer.

Cross Country Part 2

These flowers were amazing. They just popped up and there are fields and fields of them everywhere. I've never seen anything like it.
As we entered Yellowstone National Park the scenery and the wildlife became much more interesting. There was a lot of evidence of fairly recent as well as older wildfires. Note the bare trees. At the top of this tree is a bald Eagle's nest. Awesome!
And then there was HUGE buffalo just lying around on the side of the road. Although I did not want to test how wild or tame these unpredictable, and may I say MASSIVE, creatures were; Tim was more than willing to go in for the shot.
Yellowstone was a fantastic part of the trip but went by much too quickly. As we were already over 1/2 a day behind schedule we were only able to drive through Yellowstone and not stop too much. I did the driving nice and SLOW so that Tim could take lots of great pictures.
One of our stops in the park we thought was Old Faithful but turns out that we stopped at the "Fountain paint pots". These are a series of hydrothermal features including geysers, hot springs, mudpots and fumaroles. Basically a lot of hot and interestingly colored mud and water.
It did however make for some interesting pictures and upped the "educational" nature of our trip.
Tim enjoyed being able to get close to an active geyser. We soon found, a bit further down the road, that it wouldn't be as easy with Old Faithful.
WoW! All these people are waiting for the predictable and towering Old Faithful Geyser. I got a photo and then began to take video. I really found the number of people here to be the most impressive part of it though. All with camera's out.
Here it goes! It did shoot up over 100 feet. It was also exactly on time as predicted. And then it began to rain! It RAINED and RAINED and POURED! So we went into the nearby lodge for a bite to eat.

A typical Yellowstone meal: Mac and Cheese, Mashed potatoes, Buffalo meatloaf, and an Old Faithful ALE. Hearty, homey, and delicious

Next up in the Cross Country trip some famous politicians and well...nothing!