Summer Lovin' (Part 1)

Summer is almost over and I am about to embark on a new adventure. Before that happens though, I will give a brief recap of what took place in my life the past few months. This will come in two installments because a lot happened this summer and two semi-long posts are better than one ridiculously long post.

Most of my summer was spent traveling, the first stop along the way was Georgia. This is where my older brother's wedding ceremony was this past June. Although he and his wife had already been married a year, they never had an actual ceremony. SO, they decided to have a wedding which meant all of the family could get together. Also, since our two families had never actually met each other, it was a good opportunity to get to know them and vice versa.

We saw an awesome sunset on the way down there, I think we were in TN at the time:


This is the immediate family on both sides (plus grandparents) with the bride and groom:

Not a great pic, but it gives you an idea. Here is the happy couple:



Enough of that endeavor, next stop: Virginia! We actually stopped in NC along the way to visit my friend Christina who lives there. It was great because we didn't have to go out of our way and we had a superb lunch at Panera, although seeing Christina was definitely the highlight of that short stop. My Uncle Brad, his wife Deb, and their two kids Jacqueline and Jonathan live in Virginia (DC area) and that is who we stayed with while we were there for 3 weeks. We made trips into the city a few times and also visited Mt. Vernon while we were there. Since the sites of DC and Mt. Vernon are easily found on the internet, I feel no need to post those pictures. However, here are some of the fam and such...

This is Jacqueline and Jonathan, he has a love for making silly faces:


This is everyone: my fam on the left, my uncle and their fam on the right and then Stephen, his wife Crystal, and their 3 children are in the middle. Stephen is my mom's cousin. They came to visit and have dinner one night while we were there because they live in Maryland, just a couple hours away.


Here we are waiting for the fireworks in DC. We were sitting on the lawn of the Pentagon since my Uncle works there, so we had special privileges :-) The umbrella indicates that it was stormy, but the show went on! My cousins illustrate their excitement with silly faces:

The fireworks show was impressive, despite the smoke and clouds. It was a great way to end our time in Virginia and that was basically the first half of my summer road-trip. Our next stop was upstate New York where I gave my very first "official" piano concert. It was pretty exciting...but that will come in the second part of my summer adventure series...so stay tuned! ;-)