I spent the better part of late June and early July in the car and adventuring up and down along the east coast (PA>MD>SC>FL>GA). I spent a grand total of 64 hrs at home over a four week period! The adventures began outside of Philly with a long weekend packed with family fun! In 3 days we had a memorial service for my husband’s late and wonderful grandmother, followed tby a cousins family reunion and we rounded the weekend out with a celebration of my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary! When we left Charleston temps were in the triple digits and for the duration of our trip to PA & MD it was in the 70, what a relief from the heat! Fun times were had by all, despite pouring rain and the intensity of so much family for a sustained period. We had a lot of laughs, reconnecting with family we don’t get to see often and meeting new members of the family. We took in a Phillies game (die hard fans can’t be stopped) and we ate our way through hoagies and cheese steaks. On our final day in PA we took a trip to Longwood Gardens, long on my list of places to visit and I was not disappointed.
Longwood Gardens
The rest of my east coast adventures included a visit to see my family in MD, where we spent the 4th of July, a trip to FL to help my grandparents prepare for a move and a trip to GA for a business symposium. While I was in Atlanta I had a chance to visit two incredible fiber art exhibits which I’ll share with you on the next Friday Fieldtrip. I have an album of even more pictures from Longwood here if you care to spend a bit more time looking at details of this spectacular garden. It was a long day of walking and there was so much visual stimulation I left feeling completely inspired and filled up by natures beauty. I find I often need to escape and recharge someplace tranquil following being surrounded by lots of people, no matter how much I may love them! What do you do to recharge after intense time around a lot of people, or does that fill you up? What are some of your favorite “Field Trips” or vacation plans?
After about 8 hours of set up work (over 2 days) with at least 12 people involved, every last detail had been beautifully arranged. My brother and sister in law put so much of themselves into this production. Since my brother is a sound engineer there were musical themed objects everywhere, my favorite being the menus aka place settings and being in a Scandinavian country there were plenty of hearts!
A couple family members wore
Over at the fort guests were greeted with Champagne and delicious hors d’oeuvres while the couple and family had photo’s taken.
I obviously didn’t take this shot but the best man and talented photographer 
Here he is along with the bride, groom and bride’s gorgeous sister and maid of honor!
Back inside the fort the 
One of the traditions taken care of by the toastmaster is opening all the cards & gifts and displaying them as well as writing it all down! I love this, makes it so much easier for the bride and groom and you don’t have to worry about gifts “walking away”!
We ate Reindeer for our entree! It was delicious, similar to venison but also roast beef (a cross between the two maybe?).
