Josh's birthday :)

My super-awesome older brother turned 27 this week. He is notoriously hard to buy things for... so I made him this sign instead-

He liked it. But he liked this cake even more-

Confession...in between the two of us we ate the entire cake in 24 hours. Yeah...embarrassing (but delicious). But he liked this present the VERY best-

A stuffed animal deer head. It's now proudly on his wall and I am jealous! I wish one would fit into my bag on the way home. I may try and fit onto my checked bag because I think it's so awesome I can't even handle it. I may need one.

We also went out to dinner-

my hair looks funky but I think we look cute regardless.

THEN, this weekend we decided to go for a little walk up to this Russian Church that my parents have been telling me I HAD to go see. But we got distracted on the way. By this-

Yeaaahh. I could not resist. After we took a ten minute safety class -our instructor was so uninterested...he ate a candy bar while he told us how we should not fall off the trees. But the system was pretty fail safe.

And instead of starting on a "beginner" course...we went straight to the super long pretty hard one-

When we got to the top we both wanted to VOMIT.

But there was literally no way to go back so we just had to go with it.

Some of the "obstacles" (I guess you would call them) were way more terrifying then the others...then we got to this one. It was a super long zip line... Josh managed it with no problem. But I did not.

I don't know how well those pictures show that I slammed into the platform... had both my shoes fall off... swang back into the middle of the zip line and then had to pull myself back with the rope. Yeahhh I had to finish the rest of the course in my socks.

So we kept on going... here is Josh on this little saddle one (so random)-

The best/worst part was the end, where we had to jump off a tower. It was terrifying. 

And we did make it to the Russian Church...which was really pretty -

PS I saw this in a train station on the way to Josh's birthday dinner-

PS
A few people have asked me what camera I use and I hope you are not imaging me as one of those tourists with a ridiculously huge camera? Because I have pretty much a point and click Panasonic Lumix (a Christmas gift from my amazing parents) and it fits in my pocket. Not that there is anything wrong with being a huge camera tourist, it's just not really my style. Also, my camera is waterproof so when things (salad dressing on the train to Paris for example...) explode in my purse I can just rinse it off and not worry about it at all. Best Christmas present ever, thanks Mom and Dad!!