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Another highlight of our busy year was a trip to Washington D.C. We rented a house with some friends from our days at the Charlotte Observer — Mike and Chin Whitmer and their kids Kaili (Nate’s age) and Ryan (Viv’s age). We ate like champs and saw as much as possible in a long weekend.

We had pretty good weather, great company and put some decent mileage on our shoes. Our collection of photos from four phones in the nation’s capital for four days is really weak, but the memories are top notch. We’ll add more pics if we find some. Here’s Nate with a little more about the visit:

By Nate — D.C. was really fun. When we finally got to the city, we stopped at a crazy good seafood restaurant and ate there with our family friends who we were rooming with.

Right after we finished eating at the seafood place, the boys piled into a car and went to a Washington Nationals baseball game. It was great. I found a fifty dollar bill while we were getting our tickets checked, not to mention that we saw a few homers hit and an awesome rally by the Cubs in the ninth.
When we got to the house we were renting, we walked into town a little bit and had dinner.

The next day was my 14th birthday and we all decided to go see the Museum of Natural History, the Spy Museum and The National Archives. We stopped at the Spy Museum first, and it was kind of interesting to learn that during almost all of the world’s major conflicts throughout the past 60 years there have been actual spies in the middle of all of it.

They had us pick an alias from a bunch of different profiles. They tested you throughout your tour to see if you remembered your name, nationality, age and other things. The Museum of National History was my favorite. There were tons of cool artifacts and replicas of things that blew me away. They had replicas of human skulls from when we were starting to evolve and all through those times all the way up to where we are now, and they even compared all of the differences between people then and now. The aquatic exhibit was really interesting as well because they had life-size replicas of whale skeletons, even with skeletons of ancient aquatic dinosaurs mixed in.

In between going to these two museums, we stopped in Chinatown and ate at a fantastic noodle place (Reren). Lastly we stopped at The National Archives. I thought it was awesome that they had the actual Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the Constitution still preserved in one place.

When it was time for dinner we decided to go to Graffiato, Mike Isabella’s restaurant in the city. For my birthday dinner I got a shrimp scampi. They also brought out some cannolis for desert. It was probably one of the best meals I’ve had in my life. The next day we decided to go to the national mall and the National Air and Space Museum. We went to the Air and Space Museum first. It was really nice to see planes and different aircraft through history, especially the space shuttles and things like that.

After dinner we went to the Lincoln Memorial, which was the only part of the mall we did not see that afternoon. We all took some beautiful pictures of the memorial lit up at night. The next morning, we got up and left D.C. The experience was really fun and it’s something I know I’ll remember for a long time.

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It’s been an especially busy 2017 for our family, and it started with our first move since 2004. After years of waffling about whether to extensively remodel our 1940’s brick house or sell it, we began interviewing real estate agents in late January with the intention of listing our house in April. Five chaotic weeks later we had accepted an offer on our old house and found our new one.

Sorting through nearly 13 years of possessions, memories (and a lot of junk) is not easy, but necessary. It took a rainy garage sale, some interesting Craig’s list encounters and untold trips to our favorite donation stops, but we made it. Though it never feels like it when you’re in the process, all things considered it was a smooth move. It’s only been five months, but so far the new place has been everything we hoped. Below are some thoughts from Vivian:

By Vivian — We moved into our new house around the end of spring break, in April. In our new neighborhood there is a pool, and that is why Nathan got excited to move into this new house. I like the fact that I have a few friends in my grade that live in this neighborhood that I can hang out with. I believe my parents liked the benefit that we are not far from my school, and the fact that me and Nathan both had friends here and could go to the pool.

The school that we live across the street from (the middle school, grades 7-8) was Nathan’s — but only for the last month of school. He was in eighth grade going into ninth grade. From our old house he could have walked to the high school, but he was excited to walk home from the middle school to the new house. He was doing tennis towards the end of the school year and us moving made it pretty easy to get home, as in my parents didn’t have to worry about him getting home.

So I was in fifth grade at the time, and am now in sixth grade. The school that I am still going to (the intermediate, grades 4-6) is very close to our new house as well. I am excited to walk to school, but I have to get through a whole year before I can do that though. Another plus is that there are people in my grade or around my age in this neighborhood. Where we had lived before I was the youngest on our street, and by the time I was in fifth grade our neighbors were in high school.

In my opinion one of the good things about living here for my dad is that once he finishes work, he can walk. My dad at the old house liked to walk our dog Trixie because it’s a good exercise for him and she enjoys it. At the new house there are three blocks that he can walk on and it probably would equal half a mile. Also there is a park that he likes to walk to and from called Bellingham. And with our new fenced yard he can stay outside with the dogs and play with them after he’s finished working.

Some of the benefits for my mom moving here is her closet space, her being able to park the car in the garage, her being able to have a shoe rack, and just things like that. It’s not like moving here helped her with her commute to work, because we moved about two miles away from where we lived before. At our old house our garage was at the back of our house so we used it as a extra part of our basement, because it was not near our driveway. So my mom had to get into either a freezing car or a steaming hot car. Also our parents had fairly small closets and my mom had her shoes next to her dresser because she had nowhere left to put them. And now she has a giant closet and a shoe rack.

Those are just a few of the reasons that making this move was a good idea. I mean, as you can see this move made a fairly big improvement for our entire family’s life. I was reluctant at first to move, but obviously my parents have made a great decision.

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Since the start of school in late August we have been on the hamster wheel with sports, holidays and various events. Here’s a peek at some of our doings the past five months or so.

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Our latest hiking adventure took us to the top of Morrow Mountain, about 5.5 miles round trip. It was our first trip to the park, but because it’s only about 90 minutes away, I think we’ll be back.

It was still pretty warm in NC and the views at the top are good, but not the same as some of the peaks we’ve been to on the west side of the state. That said, the majority of the hike was a shaded and easy forest path to follow. The foliage had recovered from recent controlled burns, so it was definitely a pretty walk.

It was really steep near the peak, and the family became pretty spread out, but it ended with lunch at the top and some excellent scenery.

Trixie got some much needed cardio and loves our hikes as long as she can lead. Bandit has the desire, but just can’t keep up. Though every hiker we passed said they would love to be carried like we do for Bandit when he wears out, Bandit hates riding in the backpack, so Morrow Mountain might have been his hiking swan song.

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It’s been a while since we’ve been camping, so we decided to flex that muscle again and took the kids to New River State Park for a one-nighter in October. It was the best we could do as the state parks and quality camp sites fill up in the fall.

We’ll call it a success. We didn’t forget anything critical, though we did slightly underestimate how much food to bring (Nate can do some damage now).

The site was clean and we lucked out with the weather — beautiful, clear night and not too hot. We didn’t raft or canoe, but we took advantage of the hiking trails near our site and checked out the river.

We didn’t bring the dogs, but might re-think that for next time. I think they would behave themselves and sleep peacefully at night. Rachel is skeptical. Our one big whiff was bringing an air-mattress with a broken plug. The kids slept fine, but Rachel and I decided our days of sleeping on the ground are behind us. Forever.

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I made a promise to Vivian that we would do a trail ride, and kept that promise during what turned in to her birthday celebration month. We went to the mountains — in Waynesville, just outside Asheville — to visit her Papa John and do a 2-hour trail ride.

It was a beautiful trip up an old logging trail. A husband and wife team led the way on a perfect day with few signs of civilization aside from power lines near the top of the trail. It was a wide trail and shaded most of the way, though we did stop at a small clearing for photos.

We arrived in Waynesville on her actual birthday (Friday, Oct. 7) and Papa John produced an awesome birthday cake and cooked dinner. On Saturday after the ride we took her to an arts and craft show in downtown Waynesville, and later to a pretty cool burger joint in Asheville for dinner. On Sunday Papa and I dragged her to a bar with good TVs for lunch so we could watch the Lions game — just what every girl wants for her 11th birthday.

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A look back at some of the photos from our time in Michigan that didn’t find a home in our other posts.

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Thanks to a tip from Rachel’s friend Suellen, we visited a place called Pond Hill Farm with Rachel’s Aunt Jo and Uncle John, and found plenty of mischief to get into.

It had the usual jams, jellies, honey and other goodies, along with a cafe, winery, and brewery with local craft brews on tap. They also offered a hay ride of their grounds, which included a stop at a trout pond teeming with massive rainbows that fought for food like the carp at Cedar Point. No fishing allowed of course.

But the highlight was the Squash Rocket, a giant slingshot you can use to propel various vegetables into the pasture to their sheep. The squash were out of season, so we used potatoes, which were no less entertaining.

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For one week every summer, Charlevoix explodes with people, music and a carnival atmosphere known as the Venetian Festival. We had good weather and a great location (our place was a couple blocks from all the action), so we were able to experience everything the wild week had to offer.

The week included art galleries, carnival rides (we did not partake), an appearance by the Guess Who, and fireworks. The highlight was a boat parade on Lake Charlevoix/Round Lake. Aside from some pretty long waits in restaurants, the week was a lot of fun.

Rachel was kind enough to secure us seats at Charlevoix’s outdoor pavilion to see the Guess Who. I was excited to go, but as I started doing the math … they were popular in the late 60s, and were probably in their 20s at the time, I started to worry. I tried to tell the family I was fine to go alone, but we had a picnic ready and nothing else planned, so we went as a family. Turns out the only original member who played that night was drummer Gary Peterson, who walked on stage with a cane.

After a bit of a slow start and some awkward jabs at the age of the crowd, the band picked up steam. I took some friendly abuse from Nate and Rachel for my musical taste, but by the finale, even those with creaky knees were trying to dance to “American Woman.” When we got home, I let Viv (my one potential Guess Who ally) listen to some of the original songs with Burton Cummings singing, but … no dice. Just a polite “They’re OK I guess.”

I rocked out to their old stuff the rest of the vacation.

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One of our best days in Michigan was spent in the Upper Peninsula during our final week. We packed up the dogs and headed to Whitefish Point so the kids could experience the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum (and hear “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” a time or two).

Rachel and I visited the museum in the summer of 1997, and we were struck by how much it’s grown. Back then it was a bit of an outpost highlighted by one small building with the artifacts and Gordon Lightfoot’s song blaring on a loop.

Today, the museum itself is vastly improved, and the grounds also include access to the Lightkeepers Quarters, the Surfboat House (Viv and I are fans), and a boardwalk to the Superior shoreline.

Poor planning meant eating vending machine “uncrustables” for lunch, but the place was a hit with the kids, who later were able to skip stones in Superior.

On our way back to Charlevoix we visited the upper falls at Tahquamenon State Park and were not disappointed. Nathan (13) and Vivian (10) are at ages where scenic views don’t move the needle much, but this was an exception.