17 September 2012

New Jersey Weekend

Quinn and I headed up to New Jersey a couple weeks ago for the annual "Gallagher Family Picnic".  Quinn and I have been together for 6 1/2 years and he's never gone to the picnic so we figured since there was time available we would make the 16 hour trip up.  Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures besides the ones for a couple photo shoots I had while we were there.  We had fun though and ate too much.  We got in on Thursday night and just relaxed.  Friday I had a few things to do before a night photo shoot with my sister's friend and her family.  It went well, but we lost the light real quick so I'm hoping for a brighter second session over Christmas if we can work it out.  Saturday we headed out to the picnic but not before a 6 month old photo shoot with a family friend.  Bubba and Fergus were great at the park and were even allowed off their leashes for a while to wander around.  There wasn't a huge turnout, but we had fun.  It wouldn't be a family picnic without hamburgers, hotdogs, meatballs, sausage and peppers, and oysters (among a ton of other snacks).  Erin made a cake for us to celebrate Quinn's birthday.  He didn't care about the singing, but enjoyed the cake.
I gave Quinn the option on Sunday to go down to Atlantic City for the day/night to celebrate his birthday by losing our money at the craps table.  He decided that although he loves casinos he wanted to watch the first week of football instead.  We ended up having a second mini bbq at Allison and Dan's house and watched all the games.
Monday was his actual birthday (the big 32) and instead of making him drive almost all day we chose to stop overnight in North Carolina and do some shopping at the outlets right off I-95.  It was a nice break to our normal day long drive that starts at 4am.  We were able to wake up and head out at 8am, get in at 4pm and relax.  It was a really nice trip.
Thanksgiving will be at our house this year with a few friends and then we'll be heading to NJ for Christmas and Utah for Trudy's wedding.  The one good thing about all this driving is that Bubba has figured out the proper way to behave on a long trip and will usually stay laying down for 75% of the drive...finally.  It has been and will continue to be a busy year, but a lot of fun.