What we did on our summer vacation….

Well….we spent the last 2 weeks of July in Squamish climbing as much as possible, leaving on the last weekend in July to travel back to New England for my family reunion and our friends’ wedding (hi Ben & Meghan! J) After many many hours in the car we got back to NH on a Wed afternoon and spent the next couple of days helping my parents get ready for the reunion. We had a great time visiting with family, barbecueing, setting off rockets, playing wiffleball…..the torrential downpours weren’t too fun, but we made the best of it!

The following weekend we traveled to Vermont for Ben & Meghan’s wedding. More torrential downpours! But, luckily the day of the wedding was beautiful; we visited with friends, partied (and slept) in a barn and Mike pulled off his groomsman duties flawlessly.

As for the rest of August, we did some climbing around home, visited family, took a little trip to Acadia in Maine, and just for fun bought a house! On Labor Day weekend, a few days before we were planning to leave for California, I went and saw a house on a whim. It’s in the neighborhood where my parents live and I’d gone by it all the time when I was out taking Loki for a walk, so I figured I’d just go take a look. Well, a look turned into a weekend of soul searching because I fell in love with the house and couldn’t decide what to do. We had planned to leave for California for the last leg of our trip, it wasn’t exactly the time to be buying a house! After not being able to put it out of my mind, Mike convinced me to at least try to put in an offer and see what happened. Tuesday morning I applied for a mortgage, Thursday evening I made an offer and on Friday night my offer was accepted!! I was just astounded. The next couple of weeks were filled with inspections, paperwork and getting ready to move. It was a complete whirlwhind! On September 21^st, 2 weeks and 3 days after my offer was accepted papers were signed and homeownership began. Yahoo! The house is great, but we have a lot of work ahead of us: painting, renovating kitchen and bathroom, and ripping down faux wood paneling just for starters. Still, I think it’ll be worth the effort, this house has the potential to be a very cosy little home! Our friends Ri and Sarah are going to be our housemates and we’re pretty excited to have built in climbing and adventuring partners! So, are we rolling up our sleeves and getting right to work? Not quite. We moved all our stuff in the day after the closing, spent a couple days cleaning and getting a little bit unpacked, then hit the road again last Friday! With stops to visit friends in New Haven and Boulder we arrived in California last Wed night. Whew! Time for one more stint of serious climbing before we settle in and get down to work at home.

We’ve stopped in Davis to visit with Ben & Meghan (and to avoid a bad storm in Yosemite), and we’ll be heading into Yosemite Valley on Sunday to climb on some big rocks, lie in the meadow and watch the clouds go by, hike some beautiful trails…. Can’t wait!

Hope this note finds everyone enjoying the fall!

Summer vacation