Abby’s Saturday // Two Hundred and Two

Highlight of the Week

Well, summer has officially started! We went to our first amusement park of the year!
Derrick & I have been talking about getting Season Passes to Kennywood for a long time & we finally pulled the trigger this week. Derrick works less than 10 minutes away from Kennywood, and with him trying to build up his YouTube channel with roller coaster content, having season passes to Kennywood just makes sense. So, we went to the park this past Tuesday afternoon & it was the hottest day of the year (at least, that’s what it felt like!) WHEW – it was hot! Our car thermometer said 97º, but it tends to over-exaggerate a little bit. After we’d been there for a little while, it started to cool off (or we just got used to the heat) and we had such a fun time! Braelynn is finally tall enough to ride all of the Kiddieland rides!! We thought for sure she’d be able to ride them last year, but she was a few inches too short. So, we’ve been feeding her lots of spinach & Wheaties over the winter & she’s finally tall enough! She had an absolute blast. Her favorite ride was the Elephant Ride (where she could pull the lever to make the elephant go up or down) and it was just so fun to watch her ride these little rides all by herself!

Of course, the highlight of the trip for Derrick was seeing the beginnings of the new roller coaster Kennywood is building. He knew that there were footers being poured in the lagoon, but he didn’t realize that there were also markers that seemed to lay out the upcoming coaster track. This new coaster has been kept under lock & key by Kennywood, so no one even knows what roller coaster company is building it. If you could have only seen Derrick when he figured out what those stakes with pink ribbons on them meant – Braelynn & I were at the carousel & he came running up to us, almost screaming & jumping up and down – it was quite hilarious!!

Needless to say, we’ll plan to spend lots of summer evenings at Kennywood this year!

Yes, This Happened

• It’s been so hot that I got Braelynn a little swimming pool this week. However, from Wednesday on – it’s been rainy & stormy every single day (thus the photo of the pool acting as more of an umbrella than a swimming pool)! Next week we should be able to break it out & begin using it!
• We spent Memorial Day weekend at Deep Creek Lake. It was wonderful – definitely one of the warmest & most beautiful Memorial Day weekends I can remember (2 years ago it was just a little bit better, but otherwise, my memory banks only pull up memories of rainy & cold Memorial Days). Braelynn went swimming, Abby went swimming, my Dad put his boat in – it was simply wonderful.
• Speaking of the Lake: I photographed a bucket-list wedding last weekend! I’ve been dying to photograph a wedding on Deep Creek Lake, and Matt & Phoebe’s wedding last weekend made all my dreams come true! If you missed their wedding day highlights blog post, you simply have to go see – it was such a fabulous day!
• Also speaking of weddings! Debbie & Kevin’s backyard wedding last summer was published by a wedding blog this week! It’s always such an honor to see my photographs featured somewhere – go check it out!

Feeling Blessed

Thursday was kind of a big day. May 31, 2018 marked the 10 year wedding anniversary of my best friend, Naomi & Derrick’s brother, Paul. It’s so absolutely insane to think that 10 whole years – a whole decade – has already passed since their wedding day! It feels like it was just 2 or maybe 3 years ago – my memories of that day are so clear. And that’s probably because I’ve relived the moments of May 31, 2008 over & over & over again – because that’s the day that Derrick & I met. Well, okay, technically we met on May 30 – the day before the wedding. But May 31, on the wedding day, was the day that we actually connected and the day that Derrick asked for my phone number. It’s now been 10 years that Derrick & I have known each other (and we’ve been married 8 of those years) – wow. Time is such a tricky little monster, isn’t it?