the remainder of july

before i begin this post, can we just take a minute to acknowledge that i am about to complete that task of getting this blog entirely caught up, 20 posts covering the past two months, just in time for derek and i to depart for an epic adventure (which will necessitate a plethora of new posts).

but i am getting ahead of myself. first. let me wrap up the month of july. and since we spent the first three weeks of july on an already blogged about vacation, i’ll start things off here with our last day of vacation.

for our final day in new hampshire, we drove down to concord for the day. we stopped at yet another maple sugar shack for one final jug of syrup to complete our collection before heading straight to the capital to add one more capitol building to our list.

the biggest reason for our visit to concord, though, was to meet up with my cousin nicole and my aunt pam. my aunt pam is from this area-ish originally and happened to be in town for a family reunion. her husband, my uncle skip (my dad’s brother) passed away recently, so nicole traveled with her. anyways, it worked out that we were able to coordinate having lunch with them and it was so nice to catch up.

we did a little shopping in concord in the afternoon and spent the evening packing up for the long trek home. in the morning, we loaded up, stopped at dunkin’, and were on our merry way. it was a long day of the worst traffic and derek bore the brunt of it. our spirits were brightened by a detour in scranton, pa to the steamtown mall.

why the steamtown mall, you ask?
well, we happen to be big fans of “the office” and the iconic “scranton welcomes you” sign from the opening theme song is located in the steamtown mall. not sure if this is to keep people safe who were stopping on the side of the road for photos, or to drive traffic to the steamtown mall. if it’s the latter, it’s not working. (the mall was sad and weird and more like a flea market, except for an aquarium, college, and fitness center). anyways. we took our superfan photos, walked around some, and got back on the road.

we spent the night in hagerstown, to break up the 15 hours or so of driving (which was much longer because of insane new england traffic). in the morning, we finished our journey home. and i felt the sadness settle back in.

derek’s parents had been dogsitting ruby while we were gone and when they dropped her back off, everyone was so happy to be reunited. and she’s been very clingy ever since. big baby.

the rest of our july was super uneventful. and it was really only a week. i worked a lot. so did derek. lots of laundry and life to catch up on.

i insisted on capping off our travels (and excessive and poor eating) with a maple sundae, which is the only way i’ll be eating ice cream from now on. there’s been a resurgence of stranger things fandom around here, and ike has been making perler bead likenesses of his favorite characters during their daily no screens allowed time. all three kiddos had a yearly checkup but i was in the room with hazel only because teeeeeens. and the girls reorganized hazel’s room and set up an “art shop” which is super cute and what happens when i banish screens for parts of their lives.

that’s it!! i did it!!
i’m all caught up.

tomorrow, derek and i depart for iceland for 10 days, to celebrate our 20th anniversary. so. prepare yourself for a barrage of posts when we return. 🙂