"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts"

Long time no blog. Here comes a [mostly photo] recap of the past month of fun!

Ali and her friend Megan came to visit at the end of June, which was AWESOME! Finally, a few photos have surfaced from their trip (thanks Ali!), though I'm still waiting for the close-up seal and otter pictures from our kayak trip through Elkhorn Slough! It was a beautiful day for our hike at Point Lobos. 

 

Took a little while to grab this group shot with the tide threatening with every attempt to jump up onto the rock! 

July started off great... with more visitors! Kevin drove up and Nardos took the train up, and we spent 4th of July weekend together in Monterey. On the 4th, we bonfired it up on the beach with a bunch of my coworkers (yay, friends!), grilled some delicious eats, and melted up some s'mores. The rest of the weekend we spent lounging, eating, chatting, shopping, bowling, and just enjoying each other's company! 

And then there was Maryland. The flight there sucked, but the rest was amazing (okay, except my rental car... I'm clearly not a Ford girl). 

So many great parts to that trip... the long awaited first snowball of the year. 

Box Hill. The crab cake. The friends. The family. The work family. The baby bumps. 

What a fantastic week, humidity and all. Love ya, Maryland!

After a great vacation, sometimes the best remedy to a stressful 2-day workweek is another vacation. Megan, my San Jose traveler friend, wanted to see Vegas before she leaves the west coast to head home for Michigan, so there we went! Kevin was sweet enough to meet us there, and Megan's friend David helped hook us up with a suite in the Venetian. A quick trip, but a fun one! 

Because I can't turn down a party, I drove down to SoCal this weekend (first time in a while, almost forgot how long it takes :-P) to accompany Kev to his cousins' 40th birthday(s) party. Super fun masquerade party, which apparently ended in a proposal (we left before it happened to go to bed so we could wake up at 445 the next morning) - congrats Jeff and Dwayne! 

There I go!

On Sunday we somehow woke up for a fun day of climbing with Val (my awesome Loma Linda roommate!) and some new (to me) friends! New Jack City is only ~1hr 15 or less from Kevin's house and has lots of routes to try in the future, so I'm sure we'll be back! By the time we left after our climbs, the temperature was >100*, so it was definitely worth the early morning trek!

And so the story goes...

This is how Monterey gets ya! It's chilly,
but too gorgeous not to love <3