Random Pictures

These are some cute random pictures. The first is a picture of the kids looking at horses.

In this one, Janae had been throwing her bear in the air, and suddenly couldn't find it after one toss. Guess where it landed...

Amazing huh? This is Eric on his first horse ride. He didn't like it at first, but after a few steps, a big huge smile spread across his face!

Fun!

Back to School

School's back in session...and I just can't believe how fast the summer went by! Jacey is enjoying her new teacher, and Janae loves her "joyschool." Here are a few pictures of the kids on the first day.

We love you cuties - have a great school year!

Other Summer Highlights

Okay, so here are a few other highlights from the summer (in chronological order)... Green Meadow Farms This place is so cute! It's a petting farm just a few miles down the road. They kids got to pet baby chicks, calfs, kids (baby goats), milk a cow, see a pig race...and more! We went with a group of friends and had so much fun.

These horses were huge!

Eric was so excited about the bunnies, he could hardly contain himself!

Baby chicks!

Feeding the llamas - someday you'll have to ask Jacey and Janae if they liked the smell of llama food. ;)

Janae and a friend petting a calf.

Jacey petting a different calf.

Eric's little friends. They are all within a few weeks in age.

Visit from Grandma and Grandpa!!! Yes, this is always one of the highlights of the YEAR. We did our usual swim at the hotel, eat at the Dutch Market (yum-yum), and this time we went down to VA to enjoy some mini golf, huge playground, and batting cages. Here's all of us trying out the mini golf course...

The kids LOVED the huge playground...and so did Daddy! :)

All the fun tuckered somebody out!

So fun! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for coming to visit us. We love you! Piano Reital I had a Spring recital and it was a huge hit. Great job to all my wonderful students, including my own darling girls! (Wish I had pictures of them, but all I have are videos. Maybe one of these days I'll try uploading them.)

Okay, I've got to get the kids ready for bed, I'll try to do the rest of my summer stuff later. TTFN!

Summer Vacation: Part 2

We made a few stops along the way home from Virginia Beach. The first was at Yorktown, VA. We love being so close to all these places you've read about in the History books. Dane and I wanted to brush up on the details of the Revolution, so a couple weeks before our vacation, we watched a 5-part series called The Revolution from the History Channel. It was great and we highly recommend it! We got to see how the soldiers lived, how they cooked, what their medicines looked like, etc. It was neat. The only thing we missed was the cannon. We heard it when we first arrived, but shortly thereafter, it started raining, so they had it all covered up with a tarp. :( Too bad! These were the sizes of the soldier's tents:

This is an officer's tent - notably larger:

These were the doctor's supplies/medicines: (it makes me so grateful for modern medicine!)

This was where they cooked for ALL the soldiers: (notice there are several cooking areas around this big dug-out)

And these were the typical daily rations of food. Jacey and Janae did not find them very appetizing!

There was a kids room where they could dress up in the old clothing. The girls looked stunning! :) Eric was in the background pretending to be a car "ummmmmm, ummmmm, Vrummmmmmm!" Didn't get a picture of that one, but hopefully you can picture it in your mind.

The next stop was Jamestown.

The fort was pretty small, but included a church as seen in the second one.

They made repicas of the 3 ships that first arrived at Jamestown. We boarded the biggest one (lwhich really isn't all that big). They actually sail these replicas once a year to commemorate the Jamestown landing.

Here are pictures of the Powhatan village. Jacey and Janae were more excited about this one because "Pocahontas lived there." We checked out some books at the library and they learned about Pocahontas, the Powhatan indians, John Smith, etc. They especially liked the Indian homes (I forgot the specific name for them).

They had lots of furs draped over their beds and hanging on walls. The big bear fur made Jacey and Janae a little bit scared. ;)

They would make boats by burning out the middle of a big tree that they cut down.

A typical corn grinder.

After all of this, the rain picked up again, so we decided to call it a day and drive back home. It was great to get out, and fun to see all these wonderful places.

Summer Vacation: Part 1

Howdy folks! It's been a while, in fact, I didn't post anything the whole summer! School starts tomorrow, so I decided to try to get a few photos up of our fun summer memories... Summer vacation: We made a short trip to Virginia Beach. It was F . U . N ! The girls keep asking to go back to Viriginia Beach for our next summer vacation. The first thing we did was stop at Gravelly Point. It's a great place to have a picnic and watch planes take off and land from Reagan National airport. The planes flew right above us. It was fun, and LOUD!

The first thing we did when we got to Virginia Beach was go walk along the shoreline. It was a little chilly, but beautiful!

Shortly after taking these pictures, Jacey tripped and fell into the water. It was shockingly cold! :) We went back to our hotel to get dried off and de-sanded. One of the highlights of the beach was going for a walk on the board walk at night. We got cute pictures of each of the kids on their favorite color fish...

The girls loved swimming at the indoor pool (the ocean was a bit too cold for them) :)

Eric wasn't so sure about the whole beach experience. The first time we plopped him down in the sand, he just stood there, and cried...

But after about 30 minutes, he decided it wasn't so bad after all!

Jacey spent much of her time building sand castles and decorating them with things she found on the beach.

Janae spent most of her time with this -

This is the watering can she bought with her own money. She ran back and forth, back and forth, back and forth from the ocean to where they were building their castles. She ran that distance dozens, and dozens of times. She LOVED that watering can!

This is Daddy's big sand castle -

One evening, the girls found our camera and had some fun with it (one of the walls in our hotel room was a huge mirror, which explains the pictures). Silly girls! :)

And this is a picture of me out on the balcony with my little buddy.

Some of the other highlights included seeing dolphins out in the ocean (I couldn't get a good picture of it), listening to Little House on the Prarie as we were driving in the car, and enjoying the AMAZING sunrises/sunsets from our balcony!

So beautiful!!!