Green trees, ice cream, and skipping rocks

Memorial Day is a time to pay tribute to those who have given up their lives in the service of our country, it's a time for picnics, a time for concerts, and time to spend time with family...and for us, a time for adventure! We left the desert for greener pastures on the Wednesday afternoon before Memorial Day and landed in an oasis of Virginia greenery late that same evening. We spent a fun-filled five and a half days and took about 1.63 million pictures! (Warning due to the sheer number of pictures and stories of adventure, this post will be extended into a trilogy.) thanks to all our family and friends that made sure we had a such a wonderful time! It was so great to see everyone and we can't wait til next time!

Chillin in the Atlanta airport. I was tired and Matt was bored...'nuf said.

On Thursday we drove up to Baltimore to go to the Johns Hopkins Medical school graduation of which Arizona's niece's husband was a participant. This is the graduate's cute little boy that Arizona had a great time playing with throughout the ceremony. (PS the student/graduate speaker read from the book "Everybody Poops" and then proceeded to tell us all about his experience with a manual bowl extraction...not the classiest graduation speech ever but pretty darn funny nonetheless.)

This statue was outside Baltimore Symphony Hall (where the graduation was held) so of course I had to strike a pose!


We rushed from the graduation back down to Virginy to have dinner with some of our east coast residing peeps, including my newly engaged best Virginia gal and her soon -to-be hubby! We had a blast catching up within everyone and are so glad we got to see them before the mass exodus to Duck Beach for the weekend. Thanks for hanging with us guys!


After dinner we went back to Meg's new house and kicked it on our bunk beds (when Megs and I moved to Virginy we bought these bunk beds for like a $100 and shared a room and only had to pay $250 for rent...we're such a pair of smarty pants! It was on those bunk beds that we became hooked on Grey's Anatomy, watched countless movies and had one million night time chats and no matter who is sleeping on the top bunk, I'll always think of those bunk beds as "ours") and had a little catch up time. I love this gal and am so excited for she and Mark! Thanks for making some time for me Megs!


On Friday morning we went to visit Arizona's grandma and then we went to the tiny little town of Clifton and played in the forest...


and couldn't resist walking along the railroad tracks...





and then we once again made our way to the best rock skipping river in the land and had a blast skipping rocks in the chilly-at-first-but-not-so-cold-once-your-toes-go-numb stream surrounded by a forest of green the likes of which Phoenix will never see. We laughed and splashed the day away until...

we decided it was time for some of the greatest ice cream we've ever tasted at Peterson's Ice Cream... a place we visited the first time we journeyed to Clifton. They did not disappoint and boy howdy did we have a treat for our taste buds!




After the adventure to Peterson's we journeyed out to Arizona's aunt and uncle's home. We got to sit and visit with them for awhile and then we were able to convince Arizona's cousin, Eric, to go to the Nationals baseball game with us. It was the Nats vs the Brewers and our first trip to the new stadium...which we loved! The Nats won and then they treated us to a fireworks show and a great end to a fabulous day...it was all I could do to keep my eyes open on the metro ride home! Stay tuned for the rest of our adventure!