Before school once again returned to suck the life out of me, I skipped town and headed to the East Coast. My good friend Charity and I first traveled to DC to see our dear Laura Mac, and our good buddies Rob and Teej. Oh, college. We relived the glory days by having Rob play guitar and lead us in some singing, just like I begged him often to do in the dorms and duplexes. We crashed at Charity’s good friends Julie and Jared’s. They were so kind to share their living space with us for a few days.

So, I’d been to DC once before. I think I was probably 15 years old, went with my family, and from my recollection it was about 150 degrees outside every day as we traversed around the city on foot (or getting lost on the metro) seeing many many many historical sites. I mean, there is really only so much you can take in when your that age, have a little brother and sister in tow, a mom who likes to read every information panel, and its 150 jillion degrees outside. Needless to say, this experience of DC was much more pleasant. It’s always nice when you have locals to show you real city life. We stayed in the residential sector of Capitol Hill, and it was so cute. See exhibit A:

I never new that DC-ans (um.. what do you call yourselves out there? DC-ites? District-ians? Hmm..) anyhow, I never knew that they really walk EVERYWHERE. Its just very strange at first. Like you leave your friends house and you just walk home… or you have dinner with some people on a Saturday and you don’t head to your car… just start walking! And DC-ites, we came to find out, tend to think that a short walk is what many of us would quantify as a medium to long-ish walk. Oh… and another weird thing? When everybody is doing all this walking around… you like run into your friends everywhere, they also walking home! It felt like a college campus… only its a city…. or, erm, a district.. or something.

One day we headed to the uber cute “Eastern Market.”

If I lived there I would buy all my produce there… Laura and I each got a white peach and just ate it up right then and there!

I think I told Laura to make her “I’m excited to be at Eastern Market” face. This is what I got:

Oh, and in case you’ve been following my blog for awhile, Laura’s is the torso that used to grace my header. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that when it first appeared… and now she’s a little bitter its gone.

Because we walked everywhere I mostly left Big Bertha (my affectionate name for my 24-70mm f2.8 lens) at home and just carried my point and shoot with me. Here’s a montage of some fun ones…

After a most lovely time in DC– I mean come on, skee ball, Benjamin Franklin, and feeling victorious over the Metro system… what more can you ask for? Charity and I ventured out into the wild blue yonder via… dun dun dun… Greyhound Bus! We were a tiny bit worried about this endeavor, but were pleasantly surprised to find our first bus quite comfortable and even equipped with wireless internet. Well, the fun stopped there folks. They wouldn’t let us on the second bus, and told us we were going to have to wait in this less-than-appetizing bus station for four hours for the next one. We just wanted to get to the beach! So my wonderful sister drove 100 miles to come pick us up… and we indeed headed straight to the beach.

We spent the next couple days with my cute sister and brother in law in their new awesome house. Impromptu photo session!

What a goob:

And here is Winky. She is the cutest thing EVER. And yes, she has one eye and her name is Winky.

One night we headed out for tapas with Alicia- one of the nicest people ever! They wanted their picture with the tree. I’m pretty sure this was *not* my idea. 

But this one may or may not have been my idea:      Lol. Amy looks the least mean in this pic of several. She has that serious/mean face down. Not that she ever made it at me growing up.

Here’s a couple random shots I snagged while walking to the restaurant:

As we were headed out the door, Amy’s Scarlet Hope Spendyourself shirt came in the mail. I made her put it on right there and mandated a sister Spendyourself picture. Speaking of that… we need pics of you in your Spendyourself shirt! Head over to the Spendyourself blog to see details.

Thanks for an awesome vacation Charity, Amy and Adam, Laura, Julie and Jared, Rob, Teej and Alicia! Loved spending time with you all!