Halfway there....

Whitney: Daddy said he had "hump day" last week. I don't know what that means but Mom says that it means that Daddy is halfway through his deployment. I've gotten to eat a lot of chocolate but there still seems to be a lot left (I get a "Daddy Kiss" each night). Mommy says that Daddy will come home after our trip to visit family for the holidays. I was asking Mommy if tomorrow was the day we get on the airplane. Not yet she said but soon which means Daddy will be home soon too!

Monticello and Shenandoah National Park

Whitney: A week ago we headed up towards Charlottesville on a weekend adventure to enjoy the blessings of autumn. The first stop was Michie Tavern to enjoy some good ol' Southern cooking. This tavern was founded in the 1720's and they try to maintain the ambiance as close to the original as possible (though we were seated in the more modern addition). Here's a picture of me eating my lunch of fried chicken, green beans, and biscuits:

Afterwards we headed to Monticello to see the cool house that Thomas Jefferson built. Mom thought the huge garden was pretty cool but I thought the little pepper I tried to eat was "spicy". Here's Maren and I in front of the house:

After the tour there we headed to a nearby apple orchard. Unfortunately you park at the top of a hill and the only apples to be picked were a long ways away at the bottom of the hill. So we walked down a few rows of trees towards the top of the hill and were able to find a few good apples still on the tree. Here's me with my find:

The next day we headed to Shenandoah NP. The central attraction of this park is a road called Skyline Drive (only in the East). However this road does have some spectacular views. We stopped for a short hike and then headed to a picnic area where we built a campfire. We roast edhot dogs and marshmallows for lunch. We enjoyed seeing all the beautiful fall colors stretching across the rolling hills and saw a lot of deer on our drive.

Petting zoo...

Whitney: We've gotten behind on our posts the last few weeks so we'll try to bring you up to date on a few of the things we've been up to. A couple of weeks ago we were learning about farm animals in preschool. On one of of preschool days we took a trip to a local petting zoo to check out the animals. We saw a tiger, jaguar, kangaroo, and lemur (not your typical "farm" animals. We got to pet sheep, goats, deer, chicken, and a llama. Here are a few of the pictures:

New bike...

Whitney: Here's a video of me riding my new two wheeler bike. It's just like Mom and Dad's bikes (well mine still has training wheels for now). What's even better was that I was able to buy it with my own money. It only cost $5 at the thrift store! Now I don't have to wait for Santa to bring me one.

Park days...

We sure love going to the park to play. Each Wednesday we meet our friends at a different park to play. Mom also takes us to the parks on the base a couple times a week at the end of her run. Here are a few pictures of us having fun at the park.

Nana and Papa....

Our Nana and Papa (our great grandparents) came to visit us a few weeks ago. We had fun going to Chicka-FilA, shopping for clothes and toys, and eating chocolate. We even went an overnight trip to North Carolina with them to see where our ancestors lived and were buried. Mom says we saw the grave of our eighth great grandfather! We're excited to go see Nana and Papa in a few weeks at their house in Arizona. We sure love our Nana and Papa and miss seeing them as often as we did when we lived in Arizona. We took the above picture before they got on the train to go to New York City.

Happy Halloween!

Maren: Sorry we've been lazy about blogging, mostly because we can't get mom to do the typing for us. Something about too much to do lately. We hope you had a very Happy Halloween! We sure did. We started the day off with a Halloween party at our house with our park day friends. We got to decorate pumpkin cookies and play with our friends. I actually had two different costumes to wear for Halloween. I was a piglet for the party and a little fairy for the evening festivities. Our pumpkin did have a Cinderella design in it until I decided her face looked yummy to try to eat. Sister wasn't very happy with me.
Maren: This is what it looked like until I got a hold of it. Whitney: I was Sleeping Beauty for Halloween this year. We had a lot of fun celebrating. In the evening we went to the church to play some games and then go trunk or treating. Afterwards we went to the base housing area to do a little trick or treating and to go to the fall festival they were having. I really enjoyed the big slide and the cotton candy.
Maren: My favorite thing of the night was eating two lollipops!
Whitney: Here's me cheesing it with my princess pals!