Playing with the grandies...

Hayden is captivated by all things electronic.

Meghan and Evan covet enjoy Granddad's iPod:

Sudoku with Nana.

(And something about holding your pinky high to show how ridiculous classy you are.)

Awwwwww.

The Leaf Vacuum

Mesmerized!

How 'bout aiming that badboy at our yard?  Sorry, curb only.

Farm - Petting Zoo - Horse Center

The kids had Monday off school so we headed over to a local park that "preserves a piece of Fairfax County's rural heritage with it's working demonstration farm. [The farm] recreates the era of 1920-1950, when family dairy farms blanketed the landscape."  This place is great -- all sorts of farm animals, hiking trails (including several letterboxes - we found a new one!), a huge horse center (you can bring your horse here for free to use the facilities, riding rings, and roam free over some 80 acres filled with jumps and such), a playground, a country store, a hayride.  Here are a few pictures from the very old cemetary behind an old church adjoining the farm property:

Evan's big find:  A Camouflage Frog

Meghan grabbed the little guy up asap.

Let ME see the... WHOAAAAA!

Be gentle, Hayden.

Frog bite???

C'mon, guys, let's get outta here.

Hayden's Room

Behind the rocker... Hayden's secret hide-out.

Hayden sleeps better with Ringmaster Pablo on the crib waving at him.  Notice the wallpaper ripped off the wall behind the crib.  Horrifying, I know.  ALL of my other three children have slept in this crib in this corner without ever daring to rip the wallpaper from the wall.  Hayden, different beast.  My mom tells me I did this too as a baby -- only it was twice as horrifying because it was at someone else's house!

Trick or Treating

Hayden

Field Hockey

Meghan is having a great season! The 5/6 grade teams are so much more skilled than the 3/4 grade teams! That's Meghan by the ball -- red shirt #75:

Assistant Coach Daddy, below. Meghan has had the same head coach her whole FH career - 5 seasons. Coach Rob (not pictured) is from the Netherlands where it is common for men to play FH.

Bowling is Fun!

Meghan helps Tressa line up her second shot:

Tressa does a dance after a successful roll:

Good roll, Meg? She's too dumbfounded to answer.

The final scoreboard... the boys are the big winners!

Looks Like...

...it was a ROUGH day at preschool!

Letterboxing on our Twelfth Anniversary

We're off from Lake Audubon, going into the woods seeking three letterboxes! After spending at least a half hour finding exactly the right spot, we find box 1 is missing. bummer. We knew this was likely since nobody had found this box since April 2007, and about 10 people had recorded seeking it. Here's where it should have been:
So we hiked on and found box 2 about a half hour later.
Now we are very deep in the woods on the verge of discovering box 3. The hollow tree with the tangled roots behind us is the final landmark. Here I am re-reading the clues, getting us oriented just right, and looking for the huge tree that twists half-way up. Box 3 should be at its base!Found the tree a good way off the path and uphill, so Meghan and Evan went by themselves to retrieve the box. Here they are bringing it to the rest of us.

Stamping in our find!

Ahhhh. Glad to be out of the woods and out of the backpack! Now off to a very late lunch at Cal Tort!

Spy Kids

I could tell you more, but then I'd have to... well, you know.

and from 2007...

All-Around Superstar

SB2W August 2009

This excerpt is of Meghan's camp counselors announcing to the parents the awards that each girl in Meg's cabin earned. (Though the competitions were camp-wide.) Meghan won the All-Around Track Medal as well as first place ribbons in the following events: softball throw, the 100-yard dash in the track meet, the backstroke at the swim meet, "ins-and-outs" in the canoe meet, and chess champion. A natural athlete like her daddy... way to go, Megs!