Summer lovin', had me a blast!

With my last day at work being in June and Blake having liberty from training until August, we enjoyed seven amazing weeks off together this summer. We spent a lot of time at home relaxing, sorting through our stuff, and just hanging out, but we also worked on our DC bucket list - everything we wanted to do before we left, possibly for good. Even though I'd been in DC for ten years and Blake for five, there was still a pretty good list of things remaining, or that we wanted to do again.

At the National Bureau of Printing & Engraving, how tall are you in dollars?

National Bureau of Printing & Engraving. We also went to the National Postal Museum that day apparently did not take any pictures.

Uncle Slam! I didn't know he was doing a #1 sign.  Oops!

For the third year running, I sang the National Anthem for a Potomac Nationals game, the local minor league team. This year, without even auditioning, they offered me Memorial Day, my birthday, or two other dates of less consequence. I chose Memorial Day. That afternoon, they also emailed me and asked if I'd sing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch. Of course! And then as I was on deck for that, they asked if I was going to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" too. Sure! The links are to my videos from that night.

We only had time for one camping trip this year, to Lake Anna State Park, but we made it worth it, including foil dinner pizzas (Blake's idea).

This is a peppermint Joe-Joe s'more. 

We also tried this with Peeps. It was a lot of sugar.

Malcolm warmed up our bed.

And once the bugs started bugging us, we took our games inside.

The Twilight Tattoo at Fort Myer-Henderson was not what we expected, but in a good way!

I directed the ward roadshow, and Blake happily played our villain.

We ran our sixth mud run, our second Ice Cream Race!

Friends visiting from Pennsylvania were a good excuse to work on our dining bucket list. This time was Good Stuff Eatery. 

We looked at the Sun in the middle of the day.

Found a new dog park for Malcolm

Watched our last DC 4th of July fireworks - The ducks that were swimming by when they started were none too pleased and it was highly amusing to watch them sharply turn, as a big group, and swim toward our shore. "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope."

Refinished a hutch we bought while we were engaged.

Flower Library! We took a morning walk around the monuments to facilitate picking up tickets for going to the top of the Washington Monument at sunset later that night. The evening was beautiful too, but we're not sure where our photos went, so I'll just have to keep those in my heart.

Vintage Game Night at Woodrow Wilson's house! A friend from college, in the floral on the left, and I got to see each other a few times again this summer, and this is one of those times. 

NRA Firearms Museum

I dyed my hair blue! I'd wanted to for a long time, and being semi-retired was the perfect time!

And blue hair is a great excuse for dressing up as Tonks at a Harry Potter and the Cursed Child release party, where I won third place in the costume contest.

And of course we visited the newest panda baby, Bei-Bei, who was enjoying snuggles with his mom.

We managed to hit a lot of new and old favorites. I miss DC a lot, but we did a great job of bidding it farewell.