celebrating 31 years

My birthday rolled around in the middle of June and devin had an entire week off. I didn't have to worry about scheduling time off because frankly I have little to no work in the summer. (It seems like it would be awesome, but I believe devin would agree with the adage that "an idle kate is a crazy kate"...enough about that, though). We mulled over what fun activity we could do for my birthday...a backpacking trip in Big Sur, a weekend in the city and a really fancy dinner, an organized scavanger hunt with friends. Much to Devin's surprise (and delight), I decided I wanted to spend a week in ol' Pennsylvania to go see pop and grammy, to hang out with my parents and his, and to meet the newest addition to the family of my one of my oldest and best friends. We booked some plane tickets and some Jailhound tickets (that's how devin refers to greyhound buses) and were on our way.

After a red-eye flight, my folks picked us up at Harrisburg International and we headed straight to the grandparents'. Nope, we weren't feelin' like a million bucks, but the trip was priceless.

Devin casually asked pop if he had any guns still hanging around the house. Although it seemed like a casual inquiry, I know devin was barely able to contain his excitement when pop said, "sure, I have a few." He pulled out some shotguns and then showed us this pistol (is it a pistol?) that he got from some guy in World War II. He was on a 2-week leave and was traveling in England. Apparently the barracks would get raided by the Poles, so he asked his buddy to keep an eye on his stuff that was tucked under his bed. I guess Pop's buddy wasn't too reliable because when Pop returned to the barracks, his stuff had been ransacked and his favorite gun was missing. Darnit! Later in his travels he was lamenting this to a nice fellow who pulled out some guns and gave Pop his choice. He picked the litle guy that you see in the photo above. Doesn't the pattern on the counter almost look like there's blood dripping out of the barrel?

Pop (who is an amazing 90-year old that walks 3-4 miles everyday), me, devin, and the weaponry.

Grammy lives about 20 minutes from Pop and had just had some surgery so we stopped by for some dinner. It was a 2-for-1 bonus because my aunt was staying with grammy and otherwise we wouldn't have gotten to see her. My mom, grammy, and I are perusing an old photo album.

Since we were going to be on the east coast but were not going to make it out of Pennsylvania, we invited the Kellys down from Connecticut to spend the weekend with us. We'd never thought to do this before, and it was a blast. We swam, played a LOT of cards, cooked some REALLY good food, went to the movies, and had a nice dinner out for my birthday.

We saw "Up" in 3-d. Andy and I wearing our sweet new glasses.

My mom and devin's mom rockin' it Drew Carey style.

Maggie and I gettin' PUMPED for the movie.

Nerd alert.

Yay! My dad got to join the fun after spending hours with a woman who wanted a buy a used car that had zero odors in it. When my dad suggested a new car, she said that the ideal situation would be to buy a new car and then to let it sit in the lot for 1 year with the windows down and THEN it would be tolerable. He didn't get the sale, but he got to come home and play some cards!

Celebrating my 31st at the local Mexican restaurant.

My bro earned his MBA this spring. He had a little shindig at his place outside of Philly to celebrate. It was perfect because we got to see their new house, hang out with our nephew Aiden, and see a lot of family and friends that we haven't seen in way too long.

This next sequence of pictures is fantastic. My brother installed an invisible fence for their dog. My mom, sister-in-law, and I were in inside preparing for the party when we heard scream-laughs from outside. Mostly, it was devin scream-laughing followed by my dad and brother and Aiden. What the heck? They all came bustling in the house proclaiming that Devin and my dad decided to test their toughness by walking through the invisible fence while holding the dog collar. The level of shock was a 3....out of 10. Here's my dad's second shot at it in his attempt to make it through the fence without throwing the collar in the air.






After the weekend in the central and eastern parts of PA, we headed west on the greyhound to Pittsburgh to visit Kristin, Doug, Mairin, and their 6 week old daughter Orla. We love Pittsburgh. And we especially love hanging out with kristin and doug and their family. kristin was my roommate in college and I'm so grateful that we share such an amazing friendship and that our husbands are 2 peas in a pod. We hit up some great parks, got some great parent mentoring, and ended our stay at the waterpark on a sunny hot day.



Stay tuned for some exciting and fun news!