Home Again On Sunday

Well, we are home. The shot above was taken Sunday afternoon just outside Deerlodge, MT as we wearily trekked our way back across three states.

This past weekend was a whirlwind - we started by driving to Steilacom, WA (about an hour south of Seattle) on Thursday night. We arrived just in time for the 5:45 AM ferry across to my mom's place on Anderson Island. At which point the kids went for a ride in her motorboat and Marilyn and I crashed for a couple of hours. These all-nighters just seem to get less and less fun the older you get.

So why the trip? Well my little sister Jessica was getting married, and she had invited Rebekah and cousin Naomi to be flowergirls (more pics of these things to follow shortly). One of the great things about visiting though is that it gave us an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, most of whom we haven't seen since we left some five years ago.

On Friday, we hooked up with George (George is one of the best SQL guys I've ever met, and back in the dotcom days he taught me pretty much everything I know about databases). On Saturday, we reconnected with Eddie and Christy, our old neighbors from Olympia. Then finally on Sunday morning we got up at 5 AM so we could drive up into Seattle to have breakfast with Scott and Courtney (Scott is major Linux guru, and Courtney is a nurse - she was very gracious to host us at such an early hour of the morning, and she makes killer pancakes!).

All told, it was an extremely busy - yet enjoyable - weekend. We saw a lot of old friends, made quite a few new ones, and got a chance to visit with a lot of extended family to boot. Plus, it was a great wedding (more on that to follow soon as well).

At any rate, on Sunday we hopped in the car and drove back to Billings, MT, arriving home a little after 11 PM last night. Whew! We're beat! Tons of pictures to share, but it's going to take a bit to get them up. For now, you may have to content yourself with Driving Through Montana and a Moonrise Over Montana series that I snapped from the car window last night.

Stay tuned for more photos later this week...