Summer Visitors

This summer, it was so much fun to have some of our favorite California friends visit us on the East Coast. We had a blast showing them around our new home and having them be a part of our new church. In fact, both Kyle and Nikki led worship for our youth services! So fun to have a little piece of home here!

When Kendra was visiting, she was suggesting that we need to have some sort of "Guest Book" for everyone who stays with us. I thought this was a great idea... So, I decided that instead of having a guest BOOK, we would have a guest WALL. So, I'm going to frame a picture of each of our visitors in front of the Washington Monument on a wall in our house. I'm so excited about this new idea. Here are our first members that came out this summer! We are looking forward to other confirmed guests... Kyle (again), Nick Toth, the Tafallas, the Trudeaus, the Johnstons, the Bergersons....let me know if you want to be included on this list...AND on our guest WALL!

We went to Baltimore this Summer

As usual, most of our travels revolve around Baseball, Food, or History... This particular trip was mostly motivated by baseball.

We started the day off by taking a stadium tour of Camden Yards, where the Oriole's play. Camden Yards was the first of the "new" stadiums and so many newer stadiums have copied their designs and ideas. Therefore, it is really cool and beautiful... HOWEVER, one of the stadiums modeled after Camden Yards is Petco Park in San Diego...and they basically took the idea in Baltimore and improved upon it 10 times over. So, as cool as Camden Yards is, our view of it has been tainted by how AWESOME Petco Park is. That...and the fact that our tour guide was an old bitter man who's team hasn't had a winning season since 1997, made the tour less than impressive.  Another thing that was disappointing about visiting the stadium:  I have YET to find a shirt that says, "Baltimorioles"...I thought for sure that SOMEONE working for the team was as clever as me, and I would find it in their team store...but, ALAS, I am still more clever then the Baltimorioles organization.  I guess I'll just have to make my own and sell the design to them. :)

Unfortunately, it was also about 100 degrees and like 95% humidity the day we decided to venture to Baltimore. So, we ended up spending most of our day in Barnes and Noble, reading magazines and enjoying the free air conditioning. Which, is a perfectly acceptable way to spend a day...just not when you are seeing a city for the first time.

We also stayed for the Oriole's game that evening...but the Oriole's suck, and there were like, 40 other people in the stadium.  So we left around the 5th inning to venture home to wash the sweat and stink off our bodies.

SO...everyone has been telling us how great the Inner Harbor is and what a cool city Baltimore is, so I guess we'll have to go back again when it's not a million degrees.

Now you know why it's taken me so long to blog about this day...because it was pretty much average. But here are some pictures of our day anyway!