This summer, my entire extended family on my dad’s side took a two-week trip out west to the Pacific Northwest. Yes, I said extended family and two weeks. This trip consisted of three families and eleven people in total. It was crazy, a whirlwind, and it went by quickly, but it was amazing and memorable all the same.
Let me first add that I told my parents in 2004 that I wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest, Seattle specifically. Every spring break or summer it seemed like something got in the way. We went somewhere else, or it just didn’t work out for whatever reason. So when my family proposed the idea of going on a two-week trip, I was unenthused because I didn’t really see it coming to fruition. In fact, I told my mom that I couldn’t go because I would probably have a summer internship that wouldn’t allow me to take two weeks off in the middle of summer. As the trip got closer and my family actually started making reservations, buying plane tickets, and getting rental cars, I realized the trip was, in fact, happening. Then the FOMO set in. For those of you that don’t know, FOMO is the Fear Of Missing Out, and I had it bad. Summer was quickly approaching and I hadn’t found an internship yet, so I bit the bullet, bought my plane tickets, and called my mom to tell her the good news. Obviously, she was ecstatic, but probably not as ecstatic as me. (Side note: I did end up finding an internship after I had purchased the plane tickets, and thankfully they were okay with the trip! What a blessing!)
Throughout my life, I have been blessed and fortunate enough to be able to travel to other countries (some even twice!), but I can truly say that this trip brought me so much more joy because I was able to check so many things off my bucket list with my family by my side.
Overall, I am so happy that I decided to go on this once-in-a-lifetime trip with my entire family. We did so many fun things – much more than can be documented in one blog post. I am starting a series of blog posts where I will be covering the different places we visited, what we did and saw, and what not to miss if you happen to be visiting there. Unfortunately, my boyfriend, Mike, wasn’t able to come on the trip because he started his first job out of college right before the trip started. The two of us will definitely be visiting the Pacific Northwest in the next few years because I want to experience it with him. He is, of course, so important to me and I don’t like having wonderful life experiences without him.
During the trip, I decided to keep a video blog, better known as a vlog. I have uploaded them on my YouTube page, which you can enjoy here. Trust me, if you know my family, I’m sure you can guess that there are many funny Beer moments and “Segerisms”.
Stay tuned to see my first post about visiting Seattle, since that is where we started out trip!
Until next time,
Layna
Layna O'Connor 