I am going to regret this in about a year when I am putting this all together into a printed version of The Hazard Chronicles. This single entry is probably going to take as much time as three full months of normal posts, but I trust it will be worthwhile. Here are a billion photos with captions. Enjoy!

*****

This is where Addy takes over. She went on a trip to Washington DC and NYC last week. This is her report. If you make it through everything she writes, then I will attach a few photos of our family weekend at the bottom.

>>>I am still contemplating whether this was a dream or not. The entire time on the trip, I was waiting to wake up, but I never did. And now, as I'm going about my life as usual, the past week seems to be a hazy chunk of life, too unreal to have actually happened. That probably doesn't make much sense, but whatever. Here are some (out-of-order) pictures.

Faith and I both worked on an essay for the opportunity to be a part of a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. Here we are, dressed up and ready to go.

During the ceremony. I was very intent on not tripping over my own feet, making for a very focused look.

I have no idea what we are pointing at, but this is my favorite class picture that we got.

Behind a pillar, waiting to line up.

Paityn, Faith and I are assuming this man is guilty.

As we were eating our dinner at a Mexican restaurant, a fire alarm went off. Everyone in the mall which the restaurant was connected to evacuated, and no one was hurt. I'm not even sure if there was a real fire, but there were fire trucks!

Hotel room chaos. It's hard to go to bed when you are three hours ahead of your time zone...

At Mt. Vernon

Look! A "historic" drinking fountain!

We explored most of Mt. Vernon without the rest of the group, who were complaining about the heat. We had a self-guided tour, which turned out being super fun.

More pointing.

How could there not be a picture with this setup? 

We visited Amish Country, and I had to take a few pictures of these goats.

Chickens

This little goat was so excited to see us he poked his head through the fence!

We named this pony "Addy The Horse" because of her gorgeous hair.

Pretzels at Amish Country. These were really good.

And now we're in New York! This is at the subway station.

The view at the top of the rock- pictures can't even begin to do it justice.

Statue of Liberty!

This hole in the wall pizza place was one of the best meals of the trip. Because who can go to New York without getting pizza?

Ready for "The Outsiders," a Broadway show.

The Stardust Diner. This was hands down the best restaurant experience I've ever been to in my life. If I ever come back to New York, I am eating here every single night. Also, let's not forget the time when Faith was singing along and was spotted. The person came up and gave Faith the mic for a verse. It was the best night of her life.

The Outsiders is by far the best musical I've ever been to. It has it all- the energy and the music and the lighting and the actors. It is probably my favorite musical I've ever been to.

Hairy Cheese at the MET.

On the ride home, all of us got to sit next to each other. It didn't matter that our flight was delayed two hours followed by an hour on the runway.

In our seats at the play.

Statue of Liberty

Walk of Shame after locking ourselves out of our hotel room within the first five minutes. We had also left our shoes and phones in the room. Lucky for us, Mr. B. was walking down the hallway when we needed him.

*****

And here is our week:

Maren initiated a climbing trip and we had a great time. We also found some wild cherries, identified by Maren's phone app. A bunch of them were eaten and so far nobody has ended up in the hospital.

We went to Wallace. Evelyn took the girls on an outing to...a local ski hill...while the rest of us worked on the attic project. These pictures may be slightly incriminating.

Rach and I also walked down and got ice cream. I am not normally the biggest "ice cream" person, but this pistachio cherry is a game changer.

Muchacho's Tacos in Wallace. This place deserves a shout-out and gets a lot of our business

The public pool is open and we had a good time swimming

Wow. If you have actually read all the way down to here, then you probably need to get a life.

Have a good week!

Summer is in full swing. In the last eight days we, as a family, have gone on an overnight kayaking trip, gone rock climbing twice, taken a trip to Seattle, gone mountain biking, attended three concerts, ran a 5k, gone rv camping overnight, made an Irish dance video, played in a band, taken a trip to visit grandparents, and started a week with friends in Washington DC.

Let's take these things one at a time. 

First, the kayaking trip. We actually wrote about that last week. It was super fun and refreshing for Rachel and I and got us ready for the upcoming madness. School got out on Tuesday and it has been non-stop ever since.

Rock climbing: Rach and I joined a group a while back. We climb at least once a week and we've made a few new friends along the way. It's pretty much all just sport climbing, and we keep things pretty chill difficulty-wise. We sometimes go out for refreshments after it gets too dark to climb anymore.

Seattle: The day after school let out, Maren and Rachel went on a road trip- just them. They did Seattle things. They bonded. I hear it was great. Here are some photos that Rachel and Maren captioned:

The gum wall holds a disgusting allure that I will never understand. Somehow it is a 'must see' when we go to Seattle.

Maren and I went on a Seattle Underground tour that has been running for the past 60 years. Did you know that the 33 blocks of Seattle downtown businesses are actually entered on the original second floor? That's right! Due to rising tide issues, the street level was brought up a whole story to preserve this area. Maren is walking on the historic sidewalk that is now underground.

Many of the original levels are no longer used. This floor used to be the ground floor and has since fallen into disrepair. 

We had so much fun! I sure love this girl.

Maren created our Seattle schedule and Chinatown was a must! As we walked around, we scouted out a good restaurant. We ended up going to the first one we saw! The mini teacups made it an easy choice. Maren loves tea, and the tea we were served on arrival did not disappoint. We also made it a goal to try new things throughout the trip. Fried bean curd was a first, and it was pretty tasty.

We could have sworn those were pterodactyls hanging in the background

I would take a trip with this girl anywhere. We had a great drive listening to psychology podcasts and chatting.

Mountain Biking: There was a big demo day where we were able to try out a lot of different bikes and take a free shuttle to the top of the mountain. This was at a bike park with lots of named runs, well maintained trails, and a rating system similar to skiing to make sure we didn't die. The kids and I stuck mostly to blues (the one black we did was kinda scary), and Rach did a lot of greens sprinkled with blues. This was all pretty new for us but it's definitely something I could get used to.

Jack on a BMX course. Rach and Jack enjoyed the BMX bike course.

These ones were my favorite.

Concerts: Evelyn's boyfriend has been playing a lot of gigs with his band, Solace. There are usually other bands there as well. Ev has become a pretty regular part of their crew, while at the same time trying to re-start her own band, Retrospect.

5K Color Run: This was a run I did with my work team, but some of us invited kids as well. Addy and Jack both did it with me and we stayed together pretty much the whole time. The weather was a little temperamental, and for a while we were getting pelted with large hailstones. Personally, I think it just added to the unique flavor of an already unique sort of run.

Most of my work team- looking nice and fresh at the beginning of the race

Ready to go at the starting line

Maybe it was the cool weather. Maybe it was the gripping story I told while we were running. Maybe she's just getting older and better. This was Addy's fastest 5k that she's done.

Every so often there were people throwing color bombs at us, which was kind of the point of the whole thing.

Camping: Sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing where we just wanted to get out for a while and this was and easy way to do that. We went to a local campground and explored the trail system before settling in for dinner and games around the campfire.

Exploring the trails

Explanation: Jack and Lindsey wanted to go explore on their own. I posed them like this and told them to hold it so I could take a picture. We then walked away without telling them, just to see how long they would hold the pose. It lasted for like a minute before they turned around!

Why use a hot-dog stick when you can use a sword instead?

Good morning!

Dance video: We also wrote about this in the last post. Lindsey's Irish Dance group finished filming this week and editing is currently underway. Lindsey was especially enthusiastic about the fog machine they got to play with. It will be interesting to see the final product.

Band: Ev and I played together in church again. I was on lead guitar this time, making it so that I have officially played rhythm, bass, and lead with her now. Our summer weekend schedule is starting to fill up pretty quick so it might be a while before we get a chance to do it again.

Big trips: Addy was dropped off at the airport at 3:30am Sunday morning. She will spend the next week with friends in Washington DC and New York City. She updates us regularly and will share some photos and stories next week.

Jackson was dropped off yesterday to spend a week with my parents. I think they are planning on camping at least one night. Outside of that, I don't really know. He'll also have some things to write about next week though.

And that was our week. Whew! We love summer!

Have a good week!