Monday, July 18, 2005

Eastern vacation in review

Hi all! We're back from a week in PA and OH. Two weddings and multiple friend visits later, here's the rundown... I'll start w/ last weekend and work forwards:

We left Friday the 8th at around 2:30 in the afternoon. We thought, "we'll try Route 30 and miss all the Chicago traffic on I-80." BAD IDEA. I'd like to stress to anyone who comes to visit us and drives the distance to stay on I-80!!!!! Route 30 took us about 3 hours to go one hour's worth of distance, there were tons of lights, and millions of maniac drivers starting their weekend. It was horrible. It wasn't even rush hour when we left! At least we learned that lesson in NICE weather. Ugh! Never again. We had dinner at Smokey Bones and made it to Toledo around 11:30 EST. We stayed at the Holiday Inn French Quarter, right down the street from our old apartment.

Saturday we got up & had plenty of time to get to Clarion, PA where we set up camp at the Whitling residence. We got the pack n play set up and got ready for Carrie Skarada and Mark Allio's beautiful wedding and got to see TONS of our Clarion friends who'd all traveled to be together for this sweet occasion. I don't know what I was thinking; I didn't take a fraction of the pictures I should have taken. That makes me sad. Here are some to give you a general idea of the fun we had. It was so good to see everyone! We really didn't want to leave Clarion, but it helped a tiny bit to realize that so many other people weren't living there anymore either. *sniff* It WAS a good taste of how wonderful Heaven will be when we're all reunited, though! =)

Sunday morning we went to church in Clarion w/ our sweet Whitlings and then had brunch w/ Julie ("aunt Julio") and all the Orrs including baby David at Eat N Park. There's just not enough time to talk to everyone! =/ Then it was off to Butler to stay w/ my parents for two nights. They'd bought Care Bear a tea set knowing how much fun she has w/ the one at the Streator Library. We had lots of tea last week!

Monday Pa Pa took Carrie for a walk to his church where she charmed everyone she met. When they got back, we took off for the Grove City Outlets for some wedding shopping. Then we had dinner at Rachel's Roadhouse (Sharon says we missed out by not having the chocolate pretzels this time!) w/ Mary Alice and Amy. Always nice to have Girls' Night Out. I mean, The Third Monday Meeting on the Second Monday! ;) Love you guys! Then it was off to camp for a visit where we saw just about everyone we knew, including staff members who we can remember being 7 years old *sob* Haha. Nice to see how well everyone's turned out ;) The campers are in very good hands! Just wish we had more time........

So here are pictures from Saturday through Monday. I'll get to more eventually, but knew that people would be on my case if I didn't do SOMETHING since we're back now. Enjoy! =)

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