Washington

Kevin and I are going to be heading to Washington (state) for about a week!  We are SO excited!  We're going to see three National Parks, plus Seattle. It's kinda for Kevin's birthday, kinda for our 2nd Anniversary, and kinda just because we want to go on a trip to Washington!  Haha :)

The first stop on our trip will be North Cascades National Park.  It's one of the least visited National Parks in the U.S., and that sounds pretty perfect to us! We'll be camping for two nights there, and we have some good hikes planned.

This is Diablo Lake!  And it really is that color. Crazy, huh? 

And there is pretty much year-round snow for parts of North Cascades, so I think that will be the coldest part of our trip! 

After two nights of camping and hiking at North Cascades National Park, we're going to head to Mount Rainier National Park!  And we'll be staying in a CUTE little cabin just outside of the park there, so that'll be nice after the first few days of camping. We'll have two nights there as well, and Mount Rainier has some really amazing hikes too!  I'm excited for all of them, but one of them is through an area called Grove of the Patriarchs which has the oldest and largest Red Cedar trees in the mountain range and it sounds REALLY cool. 

Mt. Rainier!

Grove of the Patriarchs! 

After two nights in a cabin at Mt. Rainier National Park, we'll be heading to Olympic National Park for two nights of camping!! I'm SO excited to camp here - the campground that we hope to stay at is called Kalaloch (we can't reserve ahead of time), and it's right on the ocean. Olympic National Park is really interesting because it has both intense gorgeous forest areas, and also really amazing coastline and tidepools. So, we definitely want to spend part of our time hiking through the crazy forest areas, but then we also want to spend a lot of time wandering around the beachy areas and the tidepools.

Near Kalaloch Campground at Olympic National Park 

Also Olympic National Park!  Crazy, huh? 

Look at these trees!  Amazing. 

And after the two nights of camping at Olympic National Park, we will head over to Seattle and spend one night there! We'll have basically a day and a half to see Seattle though, because we have one night there and then we have a red-eye flight on that 2nd day.  We're soooo excited for this trip!! Washington is such a beautiful state.  

Seattle!  That's the Space Needle on the left, and that's Mt. Rainier in the distance on the right!  Pretty cool, huh? :)   

Over a month!

Wow, sorry guys!  It's been over a month since my last post!  Things have just been CRAZY busy!  Everything has been good (except work...), but I just haven't had any down-time to post anything.  So, I'll do a SUPER fast recap of the last month and include some pictures, and then I'll do another post with some upcoming plans we're excited about!

At the end of April my friend Lindsey came to visit me from Virginia, so we had a ton of fun hanging out all weekend!! The weather was crazy warm when she was here, and one day we went to Longwood Gardens to walk around and enjoy all of the beautiful flowers!  After we were tired from the gardens, we went to the nearby Chaddsford Winery where they were having a Wine and Bacon Fest!  Yes, wine AND bacon... It was glorious. It was such a fun weekend of hanging out!

Lindsey!!! It was so great to see her. 

The first weekend in May was the Broad Street Run!  It's a 10 mile run, and this was McGee's THIRD time running it!  McGee and his sisters have run it together the last 3 years, and this year was the first year with PERFECT weather!!  The first year it was SO hot (which is not good for the runners...), and last year it was raining like CRAZY (not good for anyone), and this year was kinda overcast and slightly chilly (perfect!!).

This is not a picture of Kevin or his sisters... I was too busy cheering to get a good picture of them!

During the middle of May my parents came to visit for about a week!!  It was SO great, and it flew by way too quickly.  We did some fun touristy things (some of them I hadn't done yet!), and we also had some nice relaxing time too. We saw the Jersey Shore, the Philadelphia Zoo, the Art Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary (built in 1829 and closed in 1971... it's a really cool building), and Valley Forge (our house is only like 5 minutes from Valley Forge!).  It was such a great visit!

This was at the zoo!  I forget what this bird was, but it had a little stuffed animal that it LOVED, and it kept carrying it around like it was showing it to us. So cute! 

Four monkeys at the zoo that had their tails intertwined!  It was so cute. 

Eastern State Penitentiary! It was SUCH a cool tour.  

Valley Forge! 

Valley Forge again! 

Last Wednesday my friend Adriana and her boyfriend Adam came to visit Philly!  They were doing an East Coast trip, and I'm so glad they were in Philly for a night so we got to see them! We met up with them at a bar (Monk's Cafe) in town and had dinner, and then we wandered over to another bar (Good Dog) and had some fun hanging out! It was so great to see them, and that evening went by way too quickly!!

Me and Adriana! 

Whenever I walk by City Hall I have to take a picture!  It's too pretty. 

And this weekend (Memorial Day weekend) we went to a Phillies game! Kevin's mom organized a game with the whole family (his cousin even came down from NYC!) to celebrate Kevin's upcoming birthday, and it was so much fun! We met up at the game, and then afterwards we all went over to a Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Here's Kevin walking in front of the huge Philly Phanatic! 

Kevin's Mom arranged for someone from the stadium to come over and lead our section in singing "Happy Birthday" to Kevin, and she was sprinkling confetti on him the whole time. Oh and he got that hat and card from them too since it was his birthday celebration! AND his name was on the big scoreboard, but I didn't get a pic of that... 

Kevin's mom, aunt, and sisters! 

Whew, I think that's all of the big stuff that I can think of over the last month!!  I'll do another post to tell you about some big plans coming up!