Happy-ness

Last weekend, Renee led us on a scavenger hunt in and around our house. Every clue had an action, all relating to happiness. In two teams, we yelled all at once what made us happy, taught Ben "if you're happy and you know it," and wrote down our favorite parts of this year, among other things.

It all culminated with us all finding Renee at the nearby park with a picnic lunch ready, and "dessert" suckers with the crazy mouths! It was a fun and creative way to get us thinking! Thanks Nay!

Team 1

Team 2

That night we really wanted to have a fire and smores. So we made a fire pit out back. We should have done this earlier! With the end so near, we seem to be going with a let's just do it mentality!

Allison and her milk jug fire trick

Going back a day to Friday, we were happy to have Ranita from last years' group and her sister Rachel join us for supper and bowling. The bowling alley was supposed to be doing cosmic bowling with black lights and fun music. However, the only other people there didn't want the music on and they arrived first, so we couldn't convince anyone to turn off the lights and turn on the music. So we made our own fun by doing action poses after strikes (if we could get strikes). Allison took home top score (but Mike's two game average was higher!) and a couple of us even won a free game or candy bar.

Allison celebrates Tebow-style

Yay Ranita!

Ben's happy

Abby's happy?

Another strike for Mike! (I really didn't intend on making a rhyme!)

Allison and Abby try a different way to bowl.

Washington D.C.

Last Friday after work we headed up to Washington D.C. for a weekend trip. We actually stayed in Hyattsville, MD at Hyattsville Mennonite Church (really it's their "church house" offices) about 30 minutes outside of D.C. But this gave us the opportunity to meet and make connections with the church, as well as to ride the train into the city!

It was Cinco de Mayo!

They were really excited about these ducks

Saturday morning we walked to the monuments together after waiting for tickets for the Holocaust Museum, had lunch, then split up for the afternoon to see the various museums.

At Ella's favorite - the Air and Space Museum

Saturday night we joined the church for their game night, and then Sunday morning we attended their service before heading home that afternoon.

Outside the Hyattsville Mennonite Church house

In April

Allison and Ben at work in the kitchen.

These things would be so much shorter if we could just get to posting regularly again. Sorry.

The week following our trip to Ohio was spring break here for the schools. So Allison and Ben's project for the week, which really only took them about 2 1/2 days, was to replace the ceiling in the kitchen. If you remember back to early January and this post about things falling apart around the house, it was soon thereafter that a leak in the hot water pipe running through the kitchen began. We ended up having to replace some pipes creating big holes in the ceiling. Luckily a few talented individuals from church came and aided Mike in this project.

We decided then that it would make the most sense to just replace all of the ceiling tiles, which were showing their age anyway. What a perfect project for spring break, right? Then just this past weekend while McHugh's were gone, the ceiling in the next room, the TV/computer room, started leaking! Allison was first to discover it and was about to be very upset if all their hard work in the kitchen was a waste, but alas, it was contained to the TV room and turned out to be our water heater. So before we returned home, a couple of those talented individuals from church came and replaced it with a new one. Now what to do about the bulging ceiling and water damaged couch and carpet... sigh.

On to happier matters! We celebrated Abby's Friday the 13th birthday. No bad luck for her!




That same weekend was our church retreat in Montrose, WV at a beautiful retreat center. Before heading up for the retreat, we took a detour and went to Blackwater Falls in Davis and took lots of pictures.





At retreat we helped with children's story Sunday morning and "performed" Stone Soup, which then was lunch. We really crammed a lot in that weekend, because Sunday evening we went to Morgantown for Mountain Stage, a radio show on NPR. It is usually recorded in Charleston about 3 hours south, but since this one was only about 1 hour away and it included the Punch Brothers, we decided to go for it! We were joined by Mike and Cheryl from church and we ate at an Indian buffet before. It was a fun show with the Punch Brothers, Joan Osborne, Leftover Salmon, Sylvie Lewis and Lera Lynn. You may hear it on a NPR station near you on or after June 8!

All the artists performed a song together at the end.

The next weekend Micah's parents visited from Oregon. It was fun to have them here, and they were able to join us Sunday afternoon for a baseball game in Pittsburgh. We found dollar tickets a few weeks before so we snatched those up! It was a cold day for baseball, but it was fun to watch the Pirates take on the St. Louis Cardinals, though they arguably didn't take them on very well and lost 1 to 5.