I went on an adventure! Actually, I go on an adventure almost every day. Now when I say this I don't mean I do something new and go somewhere extravagant, I simply grab a friend and verbalize the sentiment "it's an adventure!" or any other phrasing that denotes the task at hand as an adventure. Sometimes it's a trip to the grocery store -- which is extremely boring by oneself -- so adding a friend can 1. cut hunting and collection time and 2. turn into a strangely lovely little adventure. Other times it's just a day hike followed by a swim in a lake.

On July 3 I planned an afternoon of being outside with two siblings who have known me since birth. It's a story that can be really long but ultimately our parents met at Cornell Vet School and have followed each other around the country since which allowed us kids to grow up with each other. It was supposed to be a sibling hangout day but Andrew, my brother, had a baseball game so he didn't join us until dinner much later which worked out since we took a #freethenips picture... but I'm getting ahead of myself and will explain that soon.

Anyways, back to July 3. It has been uncharacteristically hot for Connecticut this entire week, a high of 90 everyday with lots of humidity. Most people would be inside blasting the AC but I love the sun and wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather and an opportunity for all of us to hangout. So, we planned an afternoon hike followed by a swim since we knew we would be sweaty, sticky, and gross.

As you can see it was a gorgeous view and yes we were sweaty, sticky, and gross. The company on the way up was unbeatable; we discussed what Disney movie we were going to watch later that night (turned out to be the original Ice Age), contemplated boob shapes, boob sizes, boob squishiness, etc. until we were all most definitely experts, and passed an adorable puppy friend who gave us an excuse to stop and catch our breath.

Side note on the boob thing since they've been mentioned twice now... I don't have sisters so I have to cash in on these conversations when I get the opportunity.

Once we reached the top we admired the view then began taking pictures in preparation for this post! I could tell you about the difficulty of propping up the phone to use the self timer but not having anything to prop it with but those of you that understand will just nod, possibly "mmhmm," and continue reading. Though I will tell you of the truly Abby exchange we had when taking the #freethenips picture.

Abby: Take it off? What if they [people boating on the lake] can see us?!

Me: Kiddo, can you see them?

Laughter ensued and now that I've written it down and it was literally two sentences I'm not sure how funny it will be to read but it's a good memory for me and gives me an excuse to post that picture so it's staying.

Our day continued by taking a short drive to the lake where we jammed out to the radio (old school I know) and got un-sweaty, sticky, and gross. We swam around, laughed at each other, and acted like goofballs. All in all we spent no money, unless you want to calculate how much gas we used, and had a pretty perfect summer day.

An adventure is what you make it. Next time you're with another person running errands or going somewhere local, call it an adventure even if you've done this exact thing many times before or you highly dislike this thing. Perhaps your attitude will change, perhaps it will not but it's worth a try! This is also not foolproof because I fail to make things an adventure all the time but I swear when I remember it is 10 million bajillion times better.

So go grab a friend or many and shout, “Let’s go on an adventure!”