First Hike of the Season

Sunday was really a beautiful day, so we ventured out to Sky Meadows park for one of our favorite hikes. The girls were really excited to get outside and run, and we were excited to do something not related to acquiring the new house (more to come on that). Sky Meadows is an amazing place, just really beautiful and picturesque. Luli was an excellent hiker this time, hiking almost the whole way, and that is pretty steep. She would run ahead and most of the time was at a more jog pace up the hill than a walk pace. Oscar basically ran down the hike with her! It was really adorable. Fiona did better than her last hike but still needed to get up on my back earlier than Luli. Hiking with 30 extra pounds on my back was fun, and a good work out for the legs. Thank goodness I've been doing weighted squats lately! We had a nice picnic, lots of picture taking, and a really fun time as a family. Oh and can I tell you how much I love these sunglasses on the girls!? Everyone on the hike loved them too, I think they're hilarious and very functional. If anyone needs a larger frame it's kids!



There were some really amazing pictures, so check out the album on the top left.

Beautiful Weather

We woke up Saturday morning to beautiful weather, getting up to the 70s. Well you can't sit around the house on a day like that in November! We packed up some lunches got dressed in our hiking gear and headed out to Shenandoah. The leaves were a wee bit past prime but it was a beautiful afternoon and the colors were still impressive. After a visit to the visitors center and touching all of the display stuff there we headed out to a short hike with a nice view. I should remember nice view always means rocks with sharp drops. This experience always leads to heightened anxiety for me even when it's just me and Oscar, add in my curious children and I'm a heartbeat away from a heart attack. Oscar likes to climb all over the rocks and Luli really wanted to climb with him. So it was *fun* keeping her with me! You can see in the pictures that I've got anxiety written all over it. Other than that we had a great time and really enjoyed the beautiful skyline drive and hike.

Hiking in Sky Meadows

It has certainly been unseasonably hot these past few days! We took advantage and went on a hike, it turned out to be a beautiful fun day for all of us. We set out for Sky Meadows State Park on Sunday and did a hike that we did last November with the girls. This year the girls did considerably more hiking. Luli did super, she hiked at least 80% of the hike, and Fiona did pretty well for her age. When the hike was too steep (up or down) Oscar and I carried the girls. Luli chose to go with me in the Ergo (and remarkably she and I were very comfortable) and Fiona in the Sherpani. Fiona took a nice nap on the downward hike but that was it for the sleep that would be had - more on that later!

We enjoyed a lovely picnic on the hillside. It was beautiful to watch the leaves float down from the trees and be surrounded by the beautiful golden hues of Autumn. We did a family photo, which I think came out great and could possibly be our holiday card this year...ironically, it's the same place we took last year's picture! Just a beautiful surrounding.

At the end of the hike we were rewarded with several treats. A local winery had a free wine tasting, very yummy! And they gave away some winery coupons...which we plan to use very soon. A second lovely treat was homemade ice cream! Luli chose chocolate, Fiona chose orange cream, I chose pumpkin and Oscar had fresh peach. All of it was so yummy! I loved the pumpkin and Fiona's peach was pretty awesome. While we enjoyed all of our edible treats we laid on our picnic blanket and listened to some fiddle and guitar music. Luli unfortunately missed when the played the Bumble Bee song! Oscar also took the girls into the hay and barrel play area, it started to get rowdy in there so their playtime wasn't super long. While they were playing I indulged in something I NEVER get to do...RELAXATION! I laid down on our picnic blanket which was under this beautiful tree with yellow leaves, I watched the yellow leaves with the amazing blue sky behind and listened to the music. It was an amazing feeling to just lay there and enjoy the beauty.

The girls really had lovely attitudes the entire day which made it an even more enjoyable experience. Like I said earlier there was no napping and while Luli dealt pretty well with that, Fiona did not. Her socks were really annoying her in the car and she went into a lovely tantrum about it. Oscar and I had had enough so he took the remaining sock off, figuring removal of annoying object will stop the situation (or at least tame it). Clearly this was the wrong move, because it has the opposite effect. Fiona went into the possessed by the devil tantrum which then led to the inevitable vomit...lovely! The girls got home, ate dinner and went to bed 2 hrs early (but slept until 7:15am!). Oscar and I enjoyed a quiet dinner and went to bed early also!

This picture is pretty much how cooperative the girls were at taking a nice picture together. The rest of the pictures came out really beautiful, so I will get around to adding them into an album and linking them up on the side...all these things to do!

The Website and The Blog

Day two of our blog is going well, seems MUCH easier than the website. I'm still downloading a lot of photos from our cameras, which is why there is a lack of photo display here. I'm also working on archiving the website to DVD for our keepsake. In an effort to do that, and make it somewhat easy, I've reactivated EVERY page I've ever made. If you're interested in a trip down memory lane you should check it out. It will remain this way until our ownership of the site runs out. Or if I need/want to put something up that can't go here I'll put it there. In the meantime here's a couple pics of the girls enjoying the river after a hot hike a few weeks back.



We went hiking at the Guest Shenandoah Park. It was a beautiful day, but unfortunately our favorite trail was closed half way through. The redeeming factor was the really nice swim in the river. We didn't even realize you could go swimming there, so we weren't prepared. But we were hot, enough motivation to strip the girls down to undies and diapers for a dip.
Luli was far more adventurous than Fiona. Luli could have spent the whole day in the river. Fiona was content to stay near the log and just splash a wee bit. After the dip, the girls were tired, as you can see here...there isn't much keeping this child awake!