We went to Massanutten (in May)

My parents and niece came to Virginia and we all went to Massanutten for a week. While we were there, we celebrated my birthday, so we made a cake, since the kids all felt that a birthday wasn't a birthday without a cake!

There is a really neat children's discovery center in Harrisonburg my friend told me about, so we went and spent the afternoon there! The kids had a blast exploring the whole place.

Elias was feeding a puppy

Every princess needs a knight!

...I'm not sure what to say...

The view from the top of the mountain at Massanutten was beautiful!

Off to the right is the building we were staying in.

My parents!

Odds and Ends

I thought I would share some odds and ends from around our home. 

Rebecca, who "wasn't tired" on this particular afternoon, fell asleep in this position at nap time. She has since stopped having naps in her room, and instead has a quiet time in the living room so as to give Elias the ability to have a nap. She was becoming far too noisy in their room, and would talk to him and get him playing so much he wasn't napping. He needs his sleep in the afternoons still, in order to be happy in the evenings. She plays outside for 30-45 minutes while I get Elias into bed and Esther fed and down for her nap, and then comes in and does school with me for about 30 minutes, and has a 30 minute quiet time. Usually we hit about 3pm at that point, and we get a snack ready and play outside for the rest of the afternoon.

Esther now likes to watch what is going on from the floor on occasion. She still prefers arms many times, but sometimes she will tolerate lying on her belly (or will flip onto her back!) to watch what is going on around her. In fact, just this morning she was fussing in our arms, fussing in her little rocking chair, and when I put her down on the floor she was suddenly perfectly happy again. I'm going to have to scrub my floors so she can spend more time there!

When Justin's parents moved, they left behind many items. The carpet sweeper was one of them, but I hadn't realized it was left behind! I got it out for Rebecca and Elias to use a couple of weeks ago, and they love it! They scramble to clean the play mat and then be the first one to clean the carpet.

We had a neighbour move in a few weeks ago, and the kids begged to bake cookies for our new neighbour, so we made him some chocolate chocolate mint chip cookies. They were a hit with everyone who got some, and were all gone within a few days here. There's a reason I rarely bake cookies. We all eat too many!

While trying to sort out behaviour issues, discipline issues, Daddy time, etc, we tried keeping the kids up until Daddy got home, which varies between 9pm and 10:30pm. It didn't work, so we are back to going to bed before Daddy gets home, but they sure enjoyed it while it lasted. They played games with him, he read them stories, and then he put them to bed. In a perfect world it would work. In our household, I couldn't get schedules shifted well enough and they were still waking at 6:30/7am despite no nap and going to bed super late. Lack of sleep made for cranky children! No thanks!

Rebecca is working so hard at growing up, and wants to do everything for herself. This makes for some interesting hair styles! Hard to believe this little girl was the size Esther is about 4 years ago! :-)

Snowy Days

We have had a number of snowfalls this year, but only a couple have stuck around long enough to really amount to anything. It has certainly been a chilly winter though! We are all looking forward to the warm weather actually staying, as we keep fluctuating up into the 60s and back down into the 30s or even lower. Brr. It wouldn't be so bad if it would just stay cold, but the ups and downs are not fun at all!

2.5 months old

 The kids had a blast in the snow that did stick around long enough to really do anything with. Rebecca insists she wants to go visit Cokum and Mooshum in the winter sometime. Perhaps someday I will be brave enough to drive up there during storm season, but I'm not really sure I want to do that with little people! It's hard to plan around winter storms when it comes to travelling.

Rebecca learned how to make snow angels this year. Elias is not yet quite coordinated enough to make them, to his frustration, but Rebecca made quite a few.

Justin built a snowman with them. It is just slightly shorter than he is, so I guess probably about 5 ft tall. Unfortunately it got knocked down within a few hours of being built, but it was fun while it lasted. I was impressed there was still snow on the ground when the snowman had been built. Elias actually recently brought me some pecans in their shells asking if they were there because the snowman was hiding. We had used pecans as the buttons for the snowman.

3.5 months

Rebecca has been begging me to teach her to knit, so I sat down with her this winter to teach her to do so. She still needs a refresher every time she starts to knit again, but once she gets going again, she actually does pretty well! She says she wants to make a scarf for Esther. We'll see. She keeps getting bored and leaving it behind.

At the Aquarium

As I mentioned a while back, we went to the aquarium while my parents were here. Rebecca had a great time, though by the end of the few hours we were there she was getting cranky due to being tired of being out... and probably just being tired as well. :)

She LOVED watching the otters! (So did I!)


Kinda looks like they're about to go swimming... doesn't it?

A seahorse! Did you know these things hatch right here in Virginia?!

Tree frogs... playing an unsuccessful game of leap frog, lol. Maybe they were making a frog totem instead.

I can't remember what these blue-billed ducks are called, but Dad and I both liked the looks of them. :)

Looking at all the little minnows!

This was one very curious turtle! It saw Rebecca looking in the window, and swam right up to her! It almost looked like it was trying to give her a kiss.


That fish is HUGE. Seriously... the tank was full of fish that looked like they could eat Rebecca in just a couple of bites!

The giant sea turtle. This was as close as Rebecca was able to get to it, as the little girl to the left in the picture kept going up and down the glass with it wherever it went. :-/

And... looking at (and below, touching) a horseshoe crab. She wasn't really into the touching of the little fins and gills and things, but when it was right side up she was fine with the shell. :)


Anyway, there's the conclusion of my November pictures... I've got some December ones to put up probably tomorrow, and will hopefully have even more in a few days (the rest are still on my camera).

Beach, Flooring, and Cousins

Well, I don't know how many paid attention to the weather around here in mid-November, but we had a very big "nor'easter" combined with the tropical storm "Ida", which caused 30-year historic rainfall! We had flooding all over the place, some places deep enough that cars were entirely covered, and houses were half-filled with water. Thankfully all that happened here was the end of our road got covered in about 1 foot of water, and the ditches all the way along the street were flooded, so driveways were hard to distinguish. No one on our street had indoor flooding though!

So, anyway, because of this, the ocean beaches were difficult to access at the beginning of the week that my parents were here, so we suggested that rather than going to a local beach, the OBX (Outer Banx) might be a better option. After going to the beach there, we thought perhaps a drive down to Cape Hatteras would be nice, turned out the road was flooded out, so they were only opening it for 1 hour of the whole day. We decided we'd go somewhere else, and ended up going to see the park where the Lost Colony was located... until they disappeared mysteriously. It's really an interesting thing, because it's a mystery that they may never find the answer to.


Rebecca thinks it is great fun to climb her stroller. We were waiting for everyone to be ready to go to the OBX at this point.

Lunch break! We'd just entered Kitty Hawk, I think. We stopped to have lunch at the tourist information there.


BEACH! I love the above picture. :)

We found a shovel sitting on the beach, and Rebecca had a great time digging in the sand for a while with it!


One of the things that we did while my parents were here, is floored the living room. Currently I haven't taken any "after" pictures-- I'll have to do that. But, this is before... but after we had the leveler down. Rebecca thought she should help too!

Mooshum helped her chiseling out the lumps...
and then tried to get her to help sanding it smooth...
but she went elsewhere, lol!
Getting ready to lay tiles, I believe, but here's one half of the room.

There's the other half!

And, here's Mara and Rebecca together. :)