The Keene Family

This trip was for Jim's work! Jim attends an annual conference that was in San Diego this year, and a lot of the wives go along on this trip. He asked me maybe a year ago if I would join him on this one, and of course I said yes. It was five whole days of sunshine and I got to do some new things in San Diego. Day 1, Friday - we were checked in at the hotel by 11 AM after a very early start in Seattle. Jim upgraded us to an ocean view room and it was beautiful! We met up with the crew (8 guys and 6 wives or something like that) and went to El Indio for lunch. Best chimichanga I've ever had. Then we hit Ocean Beach for the afternoon. We got back to the hotel in time for sunset at the pool! Jim and I walked around the conference trade show together, and then went out for dinner for the evening. On Saturday, we met some people to go to brunch on Coronado at Crown Bistro. It was so yummy. Then we walked the beach and took the ferry back to the hot...

My work recently has revolved quite a bit around Minecraft. I'm enjoying learning more. I'm starting to see lessons for Minecraft pop up in the world around me, and that's a good thing because I'll be writing lessons (and managing other writers and world builders) for the next few months... the company I work for is releasing 200 new lessons eight weeks from now and I'm in charge of that. Ah! I went to a two-day Minecraft trainer summit in Redmond with three of my other team members. We had a great time laughing and learning together. I even wore my Minecraft shirts. While our team was all in town, we had two evening events. The first was going to IMOMSOHARD at the Paramount. My friend Kristin had bought us all tickets months ago... and then my teammate Beth was already going, and we found an empty seat next to me for my teammate Kelli. Win! Then the second evening we had our team dinner, take two. Beth and Hope had missed our first team din...

We realized at the beginning of October that we were on a streak: we'd planned a camping trip every single month of 2018 - except November. So we quickly took a look around and decided to book two nights at Lake Chelan's city park for Veteran's Day Weekend. It was such a fun trip! We arrived late Saturday night (leaving after JT's football game) and woke up Sunday morning to gorgeous fall weather. First stop: tennis courts. Then we took a bike ride to downtown Chelan and just happened to be riding by when the Veteran's Day parade began. Of course we stopped and watched. Then we rode all the way through Riverwalk Park. On the way back to the campground, we stopped at the local bakery for treats. The kids spent the afternoon making a huge leaf pile. We filmed in slo-mo and boomerang while they jumped in from every possible angle. We took a walk to the park and then along the beach as well. Then we came back to the campsite for a c...