June

Since I last wrote, my little brother got married.

Here is a picture of the three of us all dressed up fancy for the event.

Don't we all look old?  I mean, I know I'm getting old.  And you can count Tim's age by skimming back through his photos and counting the ones with short and long hair.  And there are a lot of those interleaved hair lengths, so you know Tim is old.  But Jonathan.  How did he get that old?  He is as tall as my shoulder now.  

After my brother got married, we other siblings celebrated family togetherness by going camping.  No electricity, no plumbing.  Camping.  Yay.  

We were at Flaming Gorge in the top north corner of Utah, bordering Wyoming.  On Friday morning, we went rafting down the river below the dam.  And on Saturday we went on a dam tour.  Did you know you can still go on a dam tour?  We had to go through a metal detector first, and stay right with our guide.  But still, it was a pretty cool tour.  One of the coolest dam tours I have ever taken.  

After that, we ditched the extended family togetherness-with-pit-toilets thing and drove through the corner of Wyoming up to Tim's family's cabin in eastern Idaho.  Our drive took us through mountain passes and canyons and then over potato fields through the amazing spectacularness that is the western United States.  And I was happy.  I was happy partly because the drive did not exceed my daily road trip tolerance level of six hours.  And I was happy because Tim was driving and I could doze off.  And I was happy to be with my little family, just the three of us.  And also happy because I had been in Europe at the first of the month, and I would be in Europe at the end of the month, but we had consciously decided not to take our family vacation in Europe this year between the conferences, but instead to spend it in the western United States again.  And to those of us who live in the western United States, spending a week in Wyoming sounds so boring compared to spending that week in Italy.  But to drive through the Tetons again is to remember how exotic Wyoming can be.  Even if it is lacking somewhat in museums with nude statues.

Once we were at Tim's cabin, we read a lot of books, played a lot of games, and slept a lot until the jet lag finally seeped out of my bones.  We also went into Yellowstone a couple of times.  

And then home.  And then I packed.  And then caught a plane to Paris, then Toulouse, alone again heading to another conference.

The conference was lovely.  And Toulouse was lovely.   Really.  Everyone going to France says they will see Paris, of course, but few people say they will see Toulouse.  But they should.  It really is lovely.  Plus, it's only 40 minutes by train from THE Carcassonne.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to take that train because of the conference.  But next time, I will take Tim with me, and we will start in Spain with the Alhambra, then travel through all our favorite board-game-related towns and places, just because we can, and we will see them all.  

Meanwhile, now I am home, and June is over.  And in yard work news, the green sheds from our backyard are both gone, and we have the skeleton of a lovely patio instead, constructed while I was away by our lovely contractors.  The patio will be very nice, but will not be finished by the 4th of July.  After all.  But when it is finished, I will post pictures here.