Step 3 was to say goodbye to family and friends.  This was harder than we thought.  Our house had always been a great house for parties and we enjoyed hosting numerous holiday parties, fall bonfire parties, slumber parties, cocktail parties, and tea parties.  We would entertain up to 100 people at our annual Fall Bonfire Party, which we happily hosted for over 20 years!  Our party coincided with our town’s Annual Fall Festival and we always hosted our party on Saturday evening after the parade, which drew crowds of over 100,000! Our girls and their friends were in the parade many times—such wonderful memories!!  Even with a to do list a mile long of party preparations, we would sneak away every year to the parade to hang out with our friends to have “special hot chocolate” in our lidded to go cups.  This year we will not be in town for the Fall Festival—I can’t help but feel like we are living out the movie Christmas with the Kranks, but instead of Christmas, we are skipping the Fall Festival—which by the way if you live in our town, IT IS A HOLIDAY!  Second full weekend in October—the start of the holiday season for sure!  We take the responsibility of having a great party house seriously, so we had to go out with a bang—or two.  Once we decided that this would be the last summer in our house, Jim and I decided we needed to plan two parties—2 last hurrahs—one for family and one for friends.  We hosted these while both of our daughters were home for the month of June.   It was wonderful to have a house full of our favorite people one last time! We took lots of photos, laughed a lot, the kids caught crayfish in the creek, and we created special memories to keep us going on our travels.

We have a large, amazing group of friends in our town and cherish our time with them.  On September 1 our dearest friends all came together for a going away party for us! All of our friends in one place to send us off. So grateful for each of them. It’s not goodbye–just see you later! We will be back!

At the end of August we had a very nice goodbye dinner with Jim’s sister. It was great to catch her up on our plans and hear about her upcoming trip to Ireland 🙂

The Tuesday before we left was SISTER night! I have twin sisters who are 13 months younger than me. So we basically grew up as triplets 🙂 We laughed so hard as we tried to take perfect photos and a video to post on instagram. We must have been a sight to see as we attempted to capture a beautiful sunset as a background for our selfies in the parking lot. That was one of the most fun nights we had together–just the 3 of us. Loved every minute of that dinner.

The night before we left, we were treated to the best homemade meal at my parent’s house. My Mom made pork tenderloin with horseradish and blue cheese and mushroom ravioli with sage butter. So delicious and she topped it off with a toasted almond torte and Manhattans for dessert to kick off our bourbon trail adventure! She is the BEST! Dinner with my parents was the perfect way to spend our last night in PA.