The Hazard Chronicles

Even though it's still May, it feels like summer is here. Last year on this week we went skiing. This year we went to the lake, and Evelyn went to Silverwood. Kinda crazy.

There are some good little stories in the captions this week for those who are interested.

We celebrated our 19th anniversary. It is quite the life we have built together.

Addy (far left in the picture) at her NJHS thing with some of her friends. It's like a smart people club or something- I'm not a hundred percent sure.

Lindsey's friend invited her to a thing that is sort of like scouts, but with church stuff I think. Again, I'm not totally sure, but this was a little award ceremony they had and Lindsey got some patches.

While Rachel was gone last week with Evelyn, we built a bench. It's not just any bench though. This is the old Chair 3 from Lookout Pass- the one that we have ridden a hundred times as our kids learned how to ski. They replaced the lift last year as part of their expansion, and we were able to pick this relic up for ourselves. This chair then, is a physical representation of an intersection of our own family history with the history of skiing in our area. I think it's pretty neat.

And here it is on the front porch of our Wallace house. We have filled this place with fun historical artifacts, but I especially love that we have some of our own history with this one.

Rach and I got some touring kayaks with the intention of exploring more of the waterways around here. We went out on Friday for a quick sunset paddle. It was very lovely. Little did we know at the time, but this was only the beginning of a pretty spectacular night.

I'm excited for some kayak camping with this girl

Once the sun went down, we went to a lakeside restaurant with a nice patio and good food.

When we went back to the lake to retrieve our boats, we were surprised to see the parking lot full of people. Like, really full. People everywhere. Just mulling about, looking at the sky. I was confused. Was this some cult awaiting the rapture? It sure looked like it.

And then someone kindly informed us that the Northern Lights would likely be visible that night and that was the cause for all the activity. We took out a blanket, sat on the lawn, and joined the crowd.

Things were uneventful for a long time. Sometimes if you pointed your camera at just the right place and took a long exposure, you could see stuff in the screen. People seemed pretty excited about it, but honestly, it was a little "meh." Rachel liked doing the camera thing. As for me, I covered up with the blanket and closed my eyes.

But then things changed. The sky sort of just exploded (visually- no sound obviously). That is the picture above. Everywhere around me I could hear people saying "wake up, wake up." When I came out from under my blanket I could see, without any artificial enhancement, colors and streams of light. It was pretty cool.

Here's another one from our little spot on the lawn. The phone camera still enhances it a bit, but it was honestly pretty neat to just the naked eye as well. The later it got, the more spectacular it was. We called our kids at this point to wake them up and then drove home to enjoy the show with them.

To conclude this part of the blog, I have to include this random picture of Addy on our deck. I took it a few weeks ago and didn't think much of it. It didn't make it onto the blog or anything. Just a random picture on my camera reel. Which is the whole point I am about to make. Because look behind her. Look at that sunset. I mean, we get a light show virtually every night of our lives. Most mornings too, if you are willing to wake up early enough. And it is spectacular and magical every single time. Personally, I think it's more beautiful than the display of Northern lights that we saw. But it is so "normal" that these moments are just taken for granted. I get that what happened the other night is something new and surprising to most people who live here, and that is noteworthy. But I also think we don't have to look all that hard to see magic all around us. We really do live in a beautiful area.

The rest of these photos are just from things we have been up to around town. Here is a lake day with the kids (different from our sunset paddle). It is nice that so many waterways are so close to our house.