another round up, because holy crackerpants i am doing TOO MUCH STUFF

1. august charity time! many of you guys also read marie, and so know about her scare this month (and THANK GOODNESS, also the positive outcome). it freaked me out, though. i know way too many women who have had cancer scares, and they're very very very not fun. as a result, i've decided to donate to the breast cancer research foundation this month so that we can try to ensure that more and more women will be able to walk away from those biopsies with benign results. you can donate here if you'd like to join me.

also! check out what one of chris's friends is doing in september: 29 days until 29. he's using the jetblue all you can jet pass and flying over 33,000 miles in 29 days to raise cancer awareness and generate positive connections between people rather than the negative connections we share due to cancer. you can follow his travels on his blog and on twitter, or donate to the american cancer society to help him raise money.

2. my own insane summer traveling has been part of the reason i've been such a slacker here on ye olde blog: this past weekend was the fifth in a row (FIFTH!) where i've been out of town. this time, it was so that my girls and i could head back to the infamously debaucherous dewey beach just like we did last year to celebrate our lovely alyssa's birthday. i haven't managed to download the photos off of my camera yet, but this photo stolen from my friend erin sums up the weekend nicely:

have any of you been to dewey before? there's this bar called the starboard that's famous for its orange crushes, which are delicious. THIS year, we learned they had a new drink: the ruby red grapefruit crush. oh mah holy hell, people. it's absolut ruby red, sprite, and fresh-squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice. AMAAAAZING. tastes like the most refreshing little summer drink you could possibly imagine, PLUS with the added bonus of fighting off scurvy. so basically you could argue that drinking 400 of those was GOOD for us. yes. that's what we'll go with.

3. montreal! dudes, i went there like a MONTH ago and never got around to mentioning it. the whole AliceBlogs family drove up from nj for our first ever trip to canada, which was actually a terrible idea since my mom becomes a 5 year old child after about two hours in the car. despite the whimpering from the back seat (MOM) the drive wasn't too bad, except for the nearly TWO HOURS it took to get through customs at the border. considering the interrogation we got consisted of "where are you going? for how long? for vacation? ok, enjoy!" we have no idea why the backup was so intense.

but man, once we got there, we all enjoyed montreal SO MUCH. we visited one of the most amazing cathedrals i've ever seen (and trust me, i have seen MANY):

we climbed some mountains:

we did some serious drinking (cause see? we're serious? get it..? i'm usually the only one who finds this funny):

we enjoyed their parks:

...and of course, we ate POUTINE!!

(more pictures here)

we all agreed that canadians really ARE nicer and more polite than americans. and that my mom is not allowed on any more road trips over four hours.