August - A Month of Fun Relaxation

A subset of items we gave away

Since July failed to be the month of relaxation, August got to be that month - and it was awesome! Don't get me wrong, we were still extremely active, but something about it just made it relaxing. Maybe it had to do with getting a few items off our plates:

• We finished our dog training classes.
• We finished the summer BBQs at our church.
• We finished our softball season.
• We also had a trip to California planed which got canceled. We managed to keep that weekend almost completely free. Actually every Saturday was completely free except for one.
• We managed to purge TONS of items from our garage and inside - one of the shelves of our book case is completely empty (much to Vinnie's dismay).

Watching hot air balloons lift off

We managed to do fun things too:

• We watched a couple Corvallis Knights baseball games with friends. Fireworks and all. (photo)
• I DM'ed my first D&D adventure. (photo of map being printed) Jessi participated for the first time!
• We helped out with Beach Olympics.
• Jessi planted a garden.
• We managed to get a couple paint quotes, and schedule to have the outside of our duplex painted.
• We even had an impromptu campout in a friend's backyard (with them too... it wasn't like we snuck into their backyard and set up squatter rights for the evening).
• Another indicator, I suppose, was the amount of posts this month. I did my regular amount of posts AND Jessi found time to contribute as well. That was a lot of fun. By the way, we're already flying past last year's record number of posts. (why I care)

Vinnie playing in our garden

I'm glad we were able to have a relaxing August, because September is going to be a crazy month. Here's a sampling:

• Football season starts. That means fantasy football, Willamette games, and NFL.com videos. Oh yeah!
• Jessi starts teaching again. Vinnie and I are REALLY going to miss hanging out with her.
• We'll be traveling down to California for my sister's birthday party.
• Hobbit day is Wednesday the 14th. No, I don't have any plans to celebrate.
• The mentorship program at Willamette will be starting up.
• Did I mention that Jessi will be going back to work and that Vinnie and I are REALLY going to miss her?
• We'll be getting our duplex painted.
• Then, at the very end, we'll leave for our annual Parry-Furlo Campout. Yurtin' for certain!