Cousin Adventures....Europe Edition

After months of planning, Marla and I headed to Chicago to hop on a Boeing 777 and fly to Belgium.  We would be spending the next week with Marla's friend Tina and her family as our hosts.  I was excited to get to travel and see the sights.

Glenn and Tina's yard was absolutely gorgeous.  We spent quite a bit of time out on the patio.  I don't think we ate a single meal inside while we were there.

After an 8 hour flight with minimal sleeping involved I was a little fatigued but determined to stay up and get on a Belgium-friendly schedule as soon as possible.  We drove about 20 minutes away to Villers Abbey.

The abbey was built in the 1100's and abandoned in the 1700's.  I thought it was in remarkable condition.  It was fascinating to me to see a building that was close to 900 years old.  The architecture was beautiful.  I can only imagine what this building looked like during its prime.

The area was beautifully landscaped.  The gardens added another layer of beauty to this place.

We enjoyed a tasty dinner courtesy of Tina, went to bed at a normal time, and got ready for our next adventure.

More Geocaching adventures

Faced with a challenge to snag 100 geocaches in a month's time and a beautiful Saturday with nothing on the calendar, Dusty and I headed up to northwest Indiana to hammer out some geocaches.  We focused on an area of Indiana where quite a few caches had been placed in road signs.  We headed off, driving out through the fields and wind turbines. 

One of the fun things about geocaching is that you never know what you will find.  Our wanderings took us to the Monon Cafe for lunch.  A fun place with all things trains. 

Got to spend the day together out in the sun and snagged over 80 caches...success!

Fun Fourth!

Our 4th of July celebrations were slightly relocated this year due to construction in Brownsburg.  All worked to our favor as we parked at friends' house and walked a block to the parade route.

The fireworks were relocated to an area that made them visible from our back deck.  So the Painter and Schmidt families joined us and we fired up the grill for a party.  Alli and I tried our hand at Kubb.

We made the layered party drinks...successfully I might add!

This drink is Allison-approved!

The whole crew...with the exception of Paul and Ryan who were on the deck, but I didn't realize they were not in the photo until the next day.

After the fireworks show there was the mini-show on the cul-de-sac of this caliber.

Camping at the Creek

This Father's day weekend was dedicated to a camping adventure with the Painter crew at McCormick's Creek SP.  It had been far too long since we had busted out the tent.  Just 3 Hackneys on this trip as Aaron has his own job and schedule now.  Still, the car was packed to the gills with supplies for the weekend trek.  (Not sure how we managed to pack everything in our old car with 4 people!)  The forecast was calling for highs in the 90's, but no rain....we will manage.  It definitely was a hot one, but the evenings cooled down a bit and the creek and waterfall where we spent quite a bit of time were refreshing. 

Rachel and Hayden spent their time pulling fish out of the creek.

And there was plenty of time for this type of activity!

Hanging out at our own personal movie theater 

All in all (in Dusty's words) a successful camping trip. Which by his definition was not a lot of bugs, not getting cold while sleeping and no major injuries!

Caching Cousins

Last year we had taken Makenna and Carson geocaching with us and proceeded to grab most of the caches in Flora.  They both had a great time so I promised them that sometime Aunt Heidi would take them out caching again.  This trip to Illinois was a great time to take them so we put "Geocaching Adventure with Aunt Heidi" on the schedule.  On the way to Flora we swung by the Moonshine store for a Moonburger.  I had heard people raving about them so we decided to see what the fuss was all about.  It did not disappoint.  A pretty good burger!

The original intention was to geocache some back roads from Moonshine to Flora but that proved to be problematic!  It took several attempts to even get over to a main highway

We decided not to press our luck, but our new route took us past the "Mug Tree".  Rachel and I had struck out finding the geocache located here earlier.  Today we were vindicated.

On to Flora.  Milo the puppy is a growing ball of fur.  He loved all the attention Rachel gave him.

Our day with the cousins started out with a run to some of the local Little Free Libraries.  We restocked them with some of Makenna and Carson's books.  Good deed is done for the day!

After lunch, off to geocaching.  We started with a series that was located along the old abandoned highway along US 50.

We were 3 for 3 but then had to leave the last 2 of the series for later due to some bridge construction.

The rest of the caches took us along backroads into Noble.

We then headed to Olney to reward the crew with some ice cream

After a successful day of caching we took in Carson's ballgame.  Carson declared that geocaching was more fun than TV.  I consider that a win!

Geowoodstock XVI

Geocaching has been a fun hobby for our family for a couple years.  Since Geowoodstock (the large annual gathering for geocachers) was being held in Cincinnati this year and it was free we jumped in the car and headed out to join in the fun.  I didn't really know what we were going to get into but we are always up for an adventure.

We hit a line of traffic backed up at our exit.  We started seeing cars with Geocaching flags and knew we were in the right place.  We parked and started walking toward the park.  I had only ever seen a car with a trackable code once before.  Now about every other vehicle was sporting a travel bug decal.  We started snapping a few pics to log them later.

We had to log in on the official Geowoodstock log...which was this sign

There were trackable cars, trackable shirts, trackable tattoos and even a trackable dog

All in all a fun time.  I picked up a travel bug to take to Europe this summer.  We logged in several lab caches.  We also determined that there are quite a few people who are WAY more into their geocaching than we are.  HA!

Happy 13th Birthday Rachel

Rachel's 13th Birthday and the last day of 7th grade all rolled into one day.  There was plenty to celebrate today.

The present for today was a much-needed bike upgrade.  We followed up our Chick-fil-a dinner and cake with some disc golf and bike riding.

It's also Wannaporn's 13th birthday.  Happy birthday all the way to Thailand!  We love you!