Friday, June 21, 2013

Headed East

Months ago, I knew Mom, Caroline and Chris were cookin' up a road trip plan to surprise Merle, Stace and girls for Tessa's graduation in Connecticut. I was thrilled when Christine was going to be able to join the trip but sad to not be a part of the fun. Until 2 weeks before the trip that is! Steven said I could go ahead and book my airfare. We'd just been discussing how a break from the day in day out busyness of the kids, the house, my work, doctoring both my hip and Abi's fever and him being gone on shifts left me very ready for a break. 
It just got better from there. I got a flight into Hartford and Evi took the train up for NYC. She and Mom gabbed the night away waiting for my 12:15am arrival. After more gabs and a short night of rest, the Swecker clan headed to Morgan's fast pitch ball game to surprise them. Evi and I took our rental and headed east...to Rhode Island of course! My bucket list includes seeing all 40 states. As of this past week, I only have 10 to go. Evi and I enjoyed an amazing blueberry summer ale along with our bacon wrapped tater tots smothered in cheese, jalapenos and scallions. If we weren't full enough from that, we added a delicious pesto chicken pizza to it. Yes, Newport Rhode Island was definitely worth the drive! We enjoyed our afternoon there bumming around town and just enjoying some hang time.
 
 That evening after dropping our rental, we surprised Merle, Stace, Tess & Morgan when they arrived back at the auntie's rented 1800's house. This made my soul very happy as Stace had just posted something priceless on Facebook about wishing I was there as the aunties were getting settled in.

The rest of the 5 day trip included a day trip into Boston.  What an absolutely fabulous city! We grabbed a beer at Cheers Bar of course: Sam Adams Boston Red Brick is a great microbrew poured in Boston only.  We enjoyed lots of history, good food, a morning at the beach and soul refreshing time with Chris, Caroline, Christine, Tessa, Morgan, Stace, Merle, Evi and of course Mom. Several rounds of Bananagrams were played, lots of GPS directions were taken from my phone and several new wines and microbrews were tasted.

Headed South

Earlier in June, we headed south to help celebrate Papa's birthday.  If you look close, you may see that the 1 and the 7 are some how transposed on his birthday cake! It was a weekend of great weather so we headed to the strawberry farm. Lone Pine Farms has goats, sheep, a great play set, sandbox and of course fabulous berries and food. We picked almost a gallon and a half of berries and then enjoyed a picnic of fresh farm foods for lunch as well.

 Ray and Donna threw a wonderful Sunday morning brunch garden party for Papa's birthday! The weather could not have cooperated better for the gathering of friends which also included Ken & Kyong all the way from Missoula, MT.