My Mom Took a Skull on an Airplane

In April our family took a trip to Denver to see Sami and Austin where they moved this past August. It was the first time we've all been on a trip together since Myrtle Beach in 2009! Sami planned out our entire trip and made sure we saw all the best parts of Denver, and also took us outside the city to Rocky Mountain National Park, Boulder, and Golden. We had perfect weather the entire trip and we ran our butts off. While the parks and restaurants and sites were all glorious and unforgettable, perhaps more memorable were some of the things that happened just in our Air B&B or in the rented minivan that we all 7 rode around in for the long weekend. (Shout out to Dad who drove the entire time and endured the opinions of 6 backseat drivers!)

First of all, on Day 1 of the trip, we were exploring the Red Rocks Amphitheatre when my mom got a news alert on her phone. "Prince died!" she told us. We were shocked! You see, the last time we were all on vacation together in the summer of 2009, Michael Jackson died. Our entire beach trip became unintentionally Michael Jackson themed as every radio station played his songs, stores put up tributes to him, TV stations played his videos and movies about him... Well, sure enough, our Denver trip quickly became Prince themed. The minivan bumped "Kiss" and "Party Like it's 1999" that week more times than I want to remember. Now we are worried to go on another vacation all together because it seems every time we do, a pop star dies. And we can't lose Justin Timberlake!

Another memorable event was on Day 1 when we noticed that the spice cabinet in our Air B&B was meticulously organized, labeled and ALPHABETIZED. The owner of the Air B&B was a 30-40 something year old single male. We became convinced we had a Dexter situation on our hands. Who else is that anal and organized besides a trained, skilled serial killer?

And speaking of creepy things, I should tell you about the skull. You see, Sami is in Denver to get her Masters in Anthropology. She is an archaeology nerd, so naturally we often buy her things like Laura's most recent Christmas gift, a skull painted with chalkboard paint that is also a piggy bank! When Sami flew back to Denver after Christmas, she didn't have room to take all of her gifts, so my mom made sure to pack the skull with her to bring to Denver. But instead of packing it in her suitcase like most people do when they travel with skulls, she brought it in her carry-on. Imagine the look on the TSA guy's face when he saw this thing go through the scanner at the airport.

Because Denver is spread out and we visited places outside the city, we spent a LOT of time in the car together. (We flew to Denver, just FYI. That would have been a serious road trip to drive from Louisville.) The time in the car gave lots of great conversations. We learned about how Laura's friends supposedly led "an uprising" against her in the 4th grade and she's still not over it. We discussed Sami's fear of boats and Mom scared her by saying she thinks her fear of water comes from when she was "submerged in ice water as a baby" before her heart surgery, which led Sami to believe she was killed and brought back to life until Dad chimed in with the important detail that just her body was put in the ice water, not her head/face. On the last day, I had an outburst in the backseat when my sisters were trying to convince my dad to stop for restrooms 20 minutes from home. I was arguing that we should not stop so close to home and when they kept trying to overrule me I shouted "I NEVER GOT SWIM LESSONS AS A KID AND YOU TWO DID!" I have no idea how stopping for the bathroom and swim lessons are related, but for some reason I had a middle child moment and needed to know why I was never taught to swim and only taught to float. And now that I'm thinking about it, like Sami I should probably ALSO have a fear of boats because if one I'm on ever sinks, everyone else will swim to safety and I'll just have to float until someone rescues me.

Austin and Chuck are brave men.

Besides sight-seeing and riding in the van, we did a lot of other things too. We played a lot of games in bars. (Side note: if you have never played the card game "Exploding Kittens," do yourself a favor and order it on Amazon NOW and play it ASAP.) We walked a LOT and Austin lied to us constantly about how close certain destinations were to keep us from getting discouraged. We ate a ton of good food. We toured a whiskey distillery (because, duh). We climbed a mountain, sort of. We looked for Peyton Manning. We debated the origin of elk (are they a mix between donkey and deer?). We went from place to place with a schedule but also with no real agenda at the same time.

Of course the mountains were breathtaking and the elk everywhere in the park were amazing and the food was great and getting to see Sami and Austin's new 'hood was fun... but the best thing about the vacation was knowing that our family could go literally anywhere in the world together and have a good time.

But, unfortunately we'll never get that chance, you know- because of the whole pop star thing.

Reverse Bucket List

***I wrote this post on May 1 and intended to post it sometime towards the end of our time in Boston, but obviously never got around to it. So here it is now, just for fun. 
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I just invented the term Reverse Bucket List.

Moving to Boston for MIT was an amazing decision and experience for us for several reasons. Yes the two degrees Chuck will have soon are awesome. Yes the people we've met are wonderful. But on par with those two things I'd say are the experiences we've had just by living in two different parts of the country. Chuck and I were both born and raised in Kentucky and while we had both traveled some before we moved to Boston, the amount of traveling we've done in the past two years is more than we've done in our entire lives. I tried to count the number of plane rides we've taken and can't because it's so many. I've tried to come up with a list of all the cities we visited and can't, because it's too many to remember. So what I did come up with was a list of basically "things we probably never would have done in our lifetime but did because of where we lived." It's almost like a Bucket List, except written AFTER the fact. Hence: the Reverse Bucket List.

So here's the list: Things We Probably/Maybe Never Would Have Done But Did.

- Skipped rocks on Lake Champlain
- Ate lobster rolls in Maine
- Practiced dunking at the Basketball Hall of Fame
- Fed horses at a farm in New Hampshire
- Drove the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler, Canada
- Went to a beer festival in Portland, Oregon
- Listened to live music in the park underneath the Space Needle
- Took jumping pictures in the middle of the Badlands in South Dakota
- Cheered the Red Sox on at Fenway Park in the same season they won the World Series
- Saw the Battle of Little Big Horn site, Mt. Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse monument all in the same day.
- Hiked on Mt. Rainier
- Took our car on a ferry to the San Juan Islands
- Rode bikes around Stanley Park in Vancouver... twice.
- Visited NYC twice in the same month.
- Went white water rafting on a river in Washington State. (Chuck, not me. No thanks.)
- Had Easter Brunch on a boat on Lake Washington
- Toured the Vanderbilt family summer "cottages" in Newport, RI.

Life happened

Well. It's been 3 months since my last blog post and I have no other excuse besides I've been busy living life. Not that I wasn't living life the past two years, but I at least had 30 minutes every now and then to sit down and write a blog post. It may sound crazy and you may be thinking "yeah right" when I say this- but I honestly have not had a free 30 minutes to sit and blog since my last post. Our lives amped up that weekend and have only just begun to slow down a little.

Here is a recap of what we've been up to since May 17th.
- My cousin's wedding in Louisville
- Elizabeth and Shane's wedding shower and bachelor/bachelorette parties
- Final celebrations and end of school events at MIT
- We hosted our entire families in Boston
- Chuck graduated (I don't think he and I slept more than 4 hours a night the entire week of his graduation)
- Chuck was in a wedding for our friends Clayton and Christen on the Cape
- We road tripped to Louisville with our UHAUL, Chuck's parents and my sisters
- My BFF Elizabeth and Shane got hitched and we were both in the wedding
- I flew to Minnesota for my best friend Lauren's bachelorette weekend (and made $1800 in Delta travel vouchers from taking later flights both on the way there and the way home. Cha-ching!)
- We drove to West Virginia for Chuck's classmate's wedding and stayed at a resort all weekend
- We spent 4th of July with family and at the Lake
- We drove to Minnesota for Lauren's wedding, which I was in
- We took a vacation to Playa del Carmen for our delayed honeymoon/yay Chuck graduated/we better take a vacation before we start working again
- We finally moved into our new apartment and got settled
- Chuck started work at Amazon
- I interviewed for jobs and recently accepted an offer

Add on top of all those things: cookouts with family, dinner dates with friends, church, church meetings, shopping for things for our apartment, setting up insurance, cable and electric, Gamenight friends events, and probably a bunch of other stuff, and that's been our summer.

I begin work on Monday and hopefully we will FINALLY have our new routine in place. As a person who thrives off itineraries and lists, I am pretty excited to get into a routine again. Not to take away from our summer of craziness though- it was the best summer ever.

Hopefully over time I can share some pictures with you of all of our summer fun. For now, I will leave you with a few pictures from our resort in Mexico, where I daydream about at least once a day.

Family Graduations

Last weekend I took a quick 48 hour trip to Kentucky for my little sister's college graduation. Unfortunately, Chuck had a class presentation to attend from 9-4 on the same day of the graduation, so he couldn't make the trip with me. So Friday morning, I caught a flight to Louisville for a very short, very busy weekend.

Saturday we were up bright and early for a full day of graduation fun, but not just for my little sis! My cousin Ethan graduated from UofL that morning. My cousin Caitlin graduated from UK (in the same ceremony as Sami!), and Sami's boyfriend Austin graduated with his Master's from UK that morning. So many graduates! So many smart people to celebrate in one day!

We started the day in downtown Louisville at Ethan's graduation. I was so happy it worked out that I could be home for Ethan's graduation too.  I'm so proud of you, Eth! You're da bomb!

There he goes!

Oh and there goes Russdiculous!

Chuckie made it to Kentucky with me, kind of!

 Our bros

Proud parents

Proud girlfriend

Afterwards, we got on the road and headed for Lexington. Once there, we met up with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their grandma and grandpa for a late lunch/early dinner at a popular steakhouse in Lexington.

The graduation started at 6pm, and ended 1 box of popcorn, a bag of M&M's, 6 dead iPhones and 2.5 hours later.

Sami and Caitlin got to sit together and walk across the stage back to back since they were both graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences.

There they go!

Sami and Cailtin- UK is probably really sad to see you go and the real world is really happy to see you join it. :) I love you both and am so proud of you!

Proud family

Proud parents

Proud sisters

Proud boyfriend

 Oh and we later made Austin put his cap, gown and hood on so we could get some pictures of him and Sami in their gowns together. :)

No big event in the family is complete without the 5 Hagan Girls and Chuckie picture. Not quite the same as having the real Chuckie in the picture but the sentiment is still there. :)

Of course, the celebration didn't end once the graduation ceremony was over. We made a stop at Graeter's for some ice cream, a liquor store for some celebratory drinks and then our parents' hotel room for an after party, before going back to Sami's and crashing from a long and exhausting day.

Uncle Tony carried Chuckie around for a little bit.

Sunday morning we had a Mother's Day breakfast, I helped Sami pack up her car since she was moving out later that day, and then mom drove me straight back to the Louisville airport to head back to Boston. The weekend was short and sweet and tiring as I knew it would be, but I couldn't miss my little sister's college graduation.  I only wish my other half could have made the trip with me. He hated missing all of the graduations but I hope the graduates know he was there in spirit and was thinking about all of you all day! He probably felt like he was there all day too considering all the pictures I was sending him. :)

Chuckie and I head to Louisville again next weekend, Memorial Day, for my other bro, Aaron's, wedding (yay!!!) and some Liz and Shane wedding shower and bachelor/bachelorette party fun! Wedding season is upon us!

"I'm gonna go graduate now. But first? Lemme take a selfie"

Spring Break

Last week was Chuck's spring break. We decided a few weeks back that we wanted to get out of the city for the week and go South, hopefully to somewhere a little warmer. So, we did go South but unfortunately it wasn't any warmer than it was in Boston. But that's ok. We had fun anyway.

The first weekend of the break, we drove down to D.C. which is only about a 6.5-7 hour drive. (I know 7 hours is a lot but after driving from Seattle to Boston, 7 hours is like a piece of cake to us.) We stayed Saturday-Monday, left our car parked the entire time and used the Metro and our feet to get us everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.

Day 1:
The Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.

After the monuments, we were starving and wanted to watch some basketball games, so we headed to a restaurant in Chinatown called the Redline which someone had recommended to us. The atmosphere was really cool and there were huge TVs everywhere, but it took so long for them to seat us that by the time we got a table, the restaurant had turned into a club and we were pretty much the only people ordering food. Oh and people were dancing all around us and the bouncer stood right next to our table and kept leaning over me to look out the window. Awesome. We were mad at first but then we just had to laugh. It was pretty ridiculous.

Day 2:
We hit a few of the Smithsonian museums, walked around the Capitol, ate lunch at a hole in the wall place with the locals, walked to the Jefferson Memorial, hit a another museum, and then ate dinner at a place in Arlington called "Ray's the Steaks"- a place our friends and former D.C. residents had recommended as the best place to get an inexpensive steak dinner in the city. They were right. It was so. good.

 Oh yeah- forgot to mention. I'm obsessed with the Metro. It made me never want to ride the subway in Boston or NYC again.

 

Day 3:
We got to the Capitol bright and early (seems everyone else had the same idea) to try to get on a tour of the inside, took a tour of the inside, got passes to go into the gallery to watch the House in session (which lasted 5 minutes and not a single representative was present...), visited the Library of Congress and then last but certainly not least, stopped by the original Georgetown Cupcake to get some treats to take to our next stop- Virginia Beach.

Monday afternoon we drove 3ish hours from D.C. to Virginia Beach to spend the rest of the week with Chuck's sister Shawn and her family. This was our 3rd time in Virginia Beach in 7 months. It's starting to feel like our second (third?) home.

I hardly took any pictures because most of the time we were just doing normal family things. We ate dinner together every night, Chuckie and I took lunch to the girls at school and ate with them in the cafeteria, we played Wii, we played Chess and Scrabble and Clue, we went to the park, we took Caroline to praise team rehearsal at church..... We really tried to take advantage of the fact that they still want to hang out with us and think we're cool. Soon they'll be teenagers and probably think we're boring old people!

On our own, we saw Divergent at the movie theater, walked the mall, had lunch on the beach and then walked the beach even though it was pretty cold, visited a historic house, the deWitt Cottage, on VA Beach that was owned by one of my Grandpa's cousins (and visited by my Grandpa as a kid) and is now the oldest remaining house on the waterfront, became regulars at the Starbucks up the street from Shawn's house, did crossword puzzles, drove to Norfolk and ate lunch and watched a glass blowing class... On our last night in town, the girls had a sitter and the adults went to a local brewery and then a Cuban restaurant. It was the perfect ending to a great vacation!

Oh. And I may have spoiled the family dog, Zoe, a bit much while we were there. This is how she started greeting me in the mornings when I got out of bed. Ready in position for me to rub her belly.

Overall it was an awesome trip.  My only regret, now that I've gone back through pictures, is that we didn't get any pictures of us with the nieces. I guess this just means we'll have to go back to VA Beach sooner rather than later! :)

NYC, y'all

This past weekend, the sisters, Chuckie and I traveled down to NYC. I had a very strict and packed itinerary planned out for us and we followed it pretty well, but unfortunately weren't able to fit EVERYTHING in... There was just too much to do.

Saturday morning started at the World Trade Center Memorial. The weather was gorgeous, so the memorial had a long line and a big crowd inside.

 

 

After the memorial, we headed north to the High Line- a park made from an old, abandoned railroad track. If you're in NYC and looking for a place to just walk and get some good pictures of a different part of town, this is the spot. 

At the High Line, we met up with our cousin Megan and her boyfriend G who drove in from New Jersey to hang out with us. The 6 of us drove from the High Line to our hotel near Central Park for a little pregaming and UofL game watching before our dinner reservations. We played the game Heads Up on the iPhone and laughed a lot.

Dinner that night was at PJ Clarke's- an American restaurant across the street from the Lincoln Center. I'd highly recommend this place to anyone looking for relatively decent dinner prices and a view.

Once dinner was over we cabbed it to Times Square, mostly for photo ops and people watching.

Oh and we had a good time photobombing just about everyone around us for 15-20 minutes. Some people are going to get some nice surprises when they get home and look at their pictures up close. :)

After a lot of photobombing, we made our way to McGee's Irish Pub. It was inspiration for the bar MacLaren's on How I Met Your Mother (one of our favorite shows) and the cast of the show has been known to make appearances from time to time. As an added bonus, the pub is Irish and it was St. Patrick's weekend, and also the bar was 3 blocks from our hotel. Sadly, we didn't run into Neil Patrick Harris, but we did rack up a large bill and played more Heads Up and laughed a LOT more. (Yes we played a game at a table in the middle of the bar and yes people stared at us and no we did not care.)

Sunday morning we were all miraculously feeling great, (I said it was a birthday miracle!) so after some showers and checking out of the hotel, we got Starbucks and walked around Central Park.

Next we were back in a cab heading south to meet some other cousins for brunch at Baracca's. The food was delicious, the Bottomless Sangria brunch deal was fun, and our company was great.

After brunch we headed to the Met- Sami's one and only wish for our NYC to-do list. We basically ran from gallery to gallery and decided the Met needs a whole weekend to itself to properly see everything and in a way you're not just running past it. But what we did see was awesome. Who isn't impressed by standing a foot in front of an actual Monet?

After the Met we went on a hunt for ice cream, which proved impossible as it was after 5 pm on Sunday and apparently no one serves ice cream (at least not where we were) after 5pm. So we decided to start the drive back to Boston and look for ice cream on the way home. After 2 hours of driving and no ice cream, we caved and stopped at a McDonald's for some McFlurries and milkshakes. It wasn't quite what we had in mind but, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Monday was St. Patrick's Day. We slept in a little, watched some TV, and left the house in time to have lunch at Border Cafe in Harvard Square. Yep, we had Mexican food on an Irish holiday. Then we spent the afternoon shopping in Harvard Square, playing Scrabble in a Starbucks (because why not?) and mostly just chilling. We redeemed ourselves later that night and made our Irish ancestors proud- we had drinks at an Irish restaurant followed by dinner. Oh and we had birthday cupcakes.

That night we watched The Departed and then just like that the trip was over. :( I think we made the most of our time in NYC and we especially loved getting to spend some time with cousins we don't get to see a whole lot.

Highlights of the trip (besides all the sight-seeing and food):
-  Laura, Sami, Megan and G got into a cab behind mine and Chuckie's and Laura got to say the line "Follow that car!" just like she wanted to.
- We watched Newsies Friday night before NYC which gave us some really good taglines for the weekend like "Headlines don't sell papes" and "Awww, Crutchy."
- I kept calling the Empire State Building the Eiffel Tower
- Playing Heads Up in the bar but especially when we had to act out "Losing Keys" and G threw his actual keys halfway across the bar.
- We took a birthday shot called a chocolate covered pretzel and it changed our lives.
- Laura and Sami took some of the cupcakes home to Louisville with them and live tweeted the journey with the hashtag #travelingcupcakes.


Happy belated 21st birthday, Sami and happy early 30th birthday, Laura!

Next week is Chuckie's Spring Break and my huge project at work is finished and turned in, so we are taking the week to get out of town and relax. Chuckie's sis invited us down to Virginia Beach for the week and since D.C. is on the way, we decided to stop and spend the weekend there before ending up in VA Beach. I haven't been to D.C. since I was 14 and Chuck hasn't been since he was 21, so we are excited to explore the city together and have a nice little vacation week.