We spent a week visiting Kyle’s mom in Indiana – we stayed incredibly busy so it felt like we squeezed two weeks worth of visiting in! We caught up with friends, family and everything in between!

Even though our boat chores weren’t quite finished, we hightailed it up to Indiana so that we could attend the wedding reception of Kyle’s good friend Josh. We managed to see Josh and his new wife a few times over the weekend, which was wonderful! Josh invited us to go see a local fireworks show with him and his family, and it was epic!

The show was set to music, and one of the songs was “Great Balls of Fire” – the chorus was punctuated by lighting cans of gasoline on fire!

We pulled the bus out of storage – she fired right up! We’ve both missed our bus so this was a very happy reunion.

We all piled in the bus and drove over to Bare Hands Brewing for a cold one – it was almost as hot in Indiana as it’s been in North Carolina!

When we finally had a little downtime, I made a batch of sourdough bread (you wouldn’t believe how far my sourdough starter has traveled. It’s international, baby!). You guys! It’s not that I’m terrible at making bread, it’s that high humidity and a completely unpredictable boat oven make bread-making REALLY HARD!

Kyle finally had enough downtime to put together his new toy – he bought a 3D printer! It’s been on his wishlist for years, and the prices finally dropped low enough to be palatable. Some assembly required!

After it was assembled we all gathered around to watch the first print!

Our first print is the standard 3D printer torture test, which pushes the 3D printer through all the hard angles and supports.

Meet the jolly 3D printer torture test: Benchy the Boat! Not bad for a first print, although you can see we’ve got a lot of extra strings in between features – after we dial in the temperatures for the filament and the plate we should be in business!

Kyle’s mom had tickets for a baseball game, and she had pretty great seats as well! Unfortunately we got a downpour during the game, and it was close enough to the end that we decided to call it a night rather than put up with wet seats. We still had fun!

Our last big event of the week was to head out to Round Barn Winery for live music and local wine! The weather was still HOT but as long as we stayed in the shade it was a beautiful day!

After that, we had to book it up north for a picnic with my family. We never made it to the picnic, but you’ll have to wait until next time to hear about how we turned a 3 hour trip into a 10 hour trip!