Friday, August 2, 2013

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

 Wow.  It’s been over a month since I last wrote something here!

I’d like to say that the reason that I haven’t posted anything new is just because I’ve been so ridiculously busy having fun and making waves in my life that I haven’t had time to think about this blog.

But that would be a lie.  I have mainly been unable to write anything that I thought was worth sharing.  I could write about being broke, I could write about how I feel like I'm going through some sort of transition in my personal behaviour, I could write about the potential love affair I almost had but that then turned awkward and weird... but all of those things just never felt right to write about or I couldn't wrap my head around them enough to explain what was going on.

Finally, I'm at a point where I have other stuff I want to write about - like sharing with you some of my plans and some of the things I've been ruminating on for the last few weeks.  But first, I just want to play a little game of catch-up.  

Because it is summer - and I have been having lots of fun.  Here are some picture highlights and quick captions from my last month:

June 22-24: Was a weekend of River!  The water was high as hell so we didn't get to go to some of my favorite places on the boat (because they were underwater) but we did an all-day/all-night river excursion on Saturday and spent Sunday floating above an island.

We were traveling super fast in this picture so it's all
kinds of blurry, but you get the idea!

Oh the muddy, muddy Mississippi

June 29-30:  A group of my friends went camping.  They were only about an hour away, so The Boss and I went up to visit them during the day.  As soon as we all arrived and as soon as everyone got their tents set up in poured rain.  After the rain stopped, we got to go tubing (some people call it "floating") on a flooded campground that had a river running through it.  We played on flooded playground equipment and even though I got a huge gash in my foot, I managed to not get dysentery.  And no one fried by the electrical transformers which were also flooded.

The campsite after we'd all been drenched with rain.

July 3-7: I had an awesome long holiday weekend.  Watched the fireworks on the 3rd.  Spent the 4th recovering from a night of drinking out of my "magic cup" that never held the same beverage twice and never went empty.  The 5th we went out on the river again and then we went out on the town that night. The 6th and 7th I spent recovering from the madness.

Definitely one of the best pictures ever taken of our rag-tag group (plus, we were right in front of where they
were doing the July 4th air show, so there's a pretty sweet airplane in the background)
My favorite group of party girls
When he's not busy carrying whole trees on his shoulders,
this boy likes to party with the girls (who can blame him,
did you see those hotties up there?)
July 12-14: A huge group of my friends went camping.  We drank something like three bottles of whisky/whiskey, 2 bottles of vodka and roughly 390 beers.  We went tubing on a nice, non-flooded river and I got to use my solo tent.  The weather was perfect so I didn't have to use my rain fly and was able to stare up at the stars all night long.  

Some of my favorite moments of the trip - 
  • The first night was just a huge party where we were all happy to be there and to be with each other.  
  • After roughly a million hours of drinking, our entire crew took a walk to the river where we stomped around in our non-swimming clothes and giggled a LOT.
  • Falling asleep in my tent while admiring the endless stars above me.
  • Tubing the next day - water, sunshine (well... a little bit of sunshine), beer and best friends, ahhh nice.
  • The second night, sitting by the river at midnight, for hours, talking with some of my closest friends about some intense subjects and counting shooting stars.
And some of my favorite pictures...

My baby tent.  All screen = Soo many stars!

Playing in the river - beer in hand - backpack cooler - flashlight - giggles

This is what happens when I steal The Boss's camera

Those are some pasty, highly attractive SOBs

July 19-21:  We went to Chicago to celebrate Han's birthday.  We actually stayed in Rosemont on the outskirts of the city, so sadly I didn't actually get to go into the city - but we had a great time!  We went to an arcade filled with old school arcade games that were all set to free-play.  We played for hours.  We swam, went to the zoo and got heat exhaustion, but also saw some dinosaurs, and had a nice dinner at his aunt's house.

Because DINOSAURS
July 26-29:  One of my favorite coworkers/honorary little sisters got married Friday night.  It was a beautiful outdoor reception in the countryside.  She looked absolutely gorgeous and the weather was perfect.  Saturday, Sunday and Monday I spent time with my Swiss cousins who came to town!  More on this in a future post! It was the first time I'd met one of them and only the second time I'd met the other.  We had a great time together and enjoyed making jokes about weird things - like ice cream trucks driven by child molesters.

Aaaaand - that's about it!  So it's been a fun month.  I hope you're all having a great summer.

Much love,
Annie Jay



6 comments:

  1. This sounds like you are having a fabulously summer-like summer. :) Glad to have you back posting!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It started out a little slowly and then went crazy for the last month, but I'm back into a less hectic schedule, so there should be more posting soon :-)

      Delete
  2. Looks so fun! I just had the baby so I haven't had much of a summer at all. Bummer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yay! So happy you had the baby! I'm sure your life is ALL kinds of hectic right now, but I guarantee you'll get into a new routine soon :-) Can't wait to hear how your first couple of months of mommyhood have been going

      Delete
  3. She's alive! All the camping and outdoors-ing looks super fun. That tent is so cool! Kiiiind of reminds me of a sarcophagus, but way cooler because you're not dead and can see stars without getting bitten. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha yes, the tales of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I do love my little tent, but yeah I totally see what you mean. But I did find out on that camping trip that I can fit three people in it as long as everyone's willing to snuggle ;-p

      Delete