Shenandoah Valley...

For our last adventure of the summer before school starts we decided to head out to the Shenandoah Valley for a canoeing and camping adventure. After arriving and setting up camp we headed to the Luray Caverns. They are quite commercialized compared to caverns we've visited out West but were spectacular none the less. The coolest view was Dream Lake were the stalagtites are perfectly reflected in the water.

A cool feature of this cave is the organ they have inside that the various sounds come from rubber mallets striking different formations. Original "rock" music at it's best! We enjoyed the evening at the city park checking out the playground and disc golf course then headed back for hotdogs and s'mores on the campfire. The next morning we headed up river to put our canoe in the water.

We spent about 4 hours paddling down 8 miles of the south fork of the Shenandoah river. We enjoyed the variety of wildlife we saw including many turtles, heron, fish, cows, and a few deer.

After reaching our campsite, we spent the afternoon relaxing and Jim biked back up the road to retrieve the truck. The next morning we packed up camp. While I dropped the truck off down the river the others headed down to the boat and played in the water waiting for me to bike back. Unfortunately I got a flat tire 2 miles into my 6 mile ride and was not prepared with any flat repair equipment. Fortunately after running another mile with my bike I was able to hitch a ride the rest of the way to camp. We paddled another 10 miles the second day which included a few easy rapids. However it was not the wilderness experience of the previous day as the last few miles of our trip we were joined by hundreds of people riding inner tubes down the river.

In fact the most exciting and difficult rapid involved not only picking the correct line through the rapid but also trying to avoid the inner tubes and the canoe that had just flipped. We enjoyed some time swimming and playing on various rope swings both days even Whitney got in on the rope swing action.

It was an enjoyable trip in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley with the perfect fall camping weather.

GO COUGARS!

I finally got a few older posts finished but I still have some catching up to do on our latest adventures but I must say that we were very excited to see the BYU football team pull off a great win against #3 Oklahoma tonight! Our kids thought we were a bit crazy with all the cheering and hollering but that's okay. We're looking forward to many more fun games this season (now if we could just get a few more broadcast out here!) GO COUGARS!

Summer fun...

We've tried to keep busy this summer with many of the great activities in the area. We've been to many of the free family movies, storytime shows at the library, park days, evening concerts at the seawall, swimming, gymnastics camp, and Kids Day at the Fort, just to name a few. We've had a great time playing this summer but I think I can honestly say that we're ready for school to start and get back on a set routine. One more week of adventure and then school will finally begin. I think Whitney has been counting the days since preschool got out in June. She got to meet her teacher this week at Kindergarten Assessment and is excited to get started.

1900 miles...

Yep, that's how many miles we have driven in the last week. It started off with a trip to DC with the teenagers from church to visit the DC temple and then spend the afternoon being tourists downtown. The next morning I dropped Jim off at the airport early for his week long climbing trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado (aka his "mancation"). My parents arrived in the wee hours Sunday morning after flying into Baltimore and then driving down. The next day after church my dad, kids, the babysitter, and myself loaded the car and headed to Mt. Airy, NC. About two years ago, my grandparents and I had relocated a old family cemetery that was mentioned in some family records. It was by divine intervention that we found it as it was located in the middle of a farm field and the few directions were from a church no longer in existence and were quite vague. We found the site to be in a state of disrepair and so we finally got a chance to go out and get it cleaned up and arrange for some annual maintenance on it. Monday the kids hung out at the hotel with the babysitter while my dad and I with the generous help of the farmer spent a few hours cleaning up the site. We were quite overwhelmed when we first pulled up as the weeds were literally seven feet high. We had to fill in a few sunken graves and reset some sunken or toppled headstones, one of which we had to dig down about 3 feet to pull it out which made us a bit nervous as to what we might dig up. Luckily the only artifact we found was an old metal marker. It was quite interesting to see the 60+ gravesites, including those of many of my direct ancestors as far back as my 7th great grandfather. Before and after shots:

We headed the 5.5 hours home that afternoon. The next day we decided to head to the Outer Banks since my dad had never been there. We visited the Wright Brothers Memorial where the first powered flight occurred and then spent some time playing on the beach. We spent the next morning packing up and then headed to Baltimore to meet up with my mom who had work up there earlier in the week. I was again reminded why I don't want to live in a big city as we sat in DC traffic due to construction and accidents and it wasn't even rush hour yet! Thursday we drove into DC for a tour of the White House and then a visit to Museum of the American Indian. I'd had the opportunity to visit the White House before but I hadn't been on the regular tour route so it was fun to see those rooms.

Friday we visited the National Aquarium in Baltimore which was fairly impressive. Maren's favorite part was seeing Nemo multiple times and Whitney really enjoyed the dolphin show. It was interesting to hear the amount of aquatic knowledge of many kids that had come from such shows as "Finding Nemo" and "Sponge Bob Square Pants". If it wasn't for those shows I don't think they would have known what an anemone or clown fish were. We enjoyed a little paddle boat excursion in the Baltimore harbor after the aquarium and then it was back to the hotel for their daily swim.

(Don't you just love stubborn 2 year olds!)

That night my youngest brother flew in from Germany so we enjoyed visiting with him. The next morning after seeing my brother off, we headed back into downtown Baltimore to visit Port Discovery. It was an amazing childrens museum that the girls thoroughly enjoyed. Whitney's favorite was the four story climbing structure that filled the atrium of the museum. It had all kinds of secret passageways with entrances and exits on each of the 3 floors of the museum.

One thing I had to laugh about was Whitney's choices of food at the play grocery store there. Look what she filled her basket with:

Maren loved the water room with the water pipes and river. After a few hours we were all worn out so piled in the car for the long drive home. We picked Jim up the next evening and he had a wonderful time climbing Longs Peak and a few other routes.

4 months...

We can't believe our little buddy is already four months old. His sisters just love to play with him and he usually rewards them with one of his big smiles. However at times they bug him too much and Mom gets upset when she now has a fussy baby that just a few minutes prior was playing quite contentedly on his own. He is growing like a weed now weighing in at 15 lb. 15 oz. (75%) and 26" tall (90%). He loves to play with his toys and puts whatever he can grab in his mouth of course. He's rolling over from his back and front and loves to hold on to your fingers and be pulled up to standing. We're all smitten by his easy going and happy demeanor.

Mud Run...

Jim and I signed up to do the Mud Run put on by the Seabees and Seals at a local Navy base. The run was 5 miles long through the waves, forested singletrack trails, fording a river, running through multiple mud pits, and the majority of the miles in loose sand up and over many sand dunes with the finish being the infamous mud crawl. It was a fun race but being in the fourth wave of runners we hit many bottlenecks along the way where we had to walk or wait in line to get past obstacles. We were grateful to finish in just under an hour and 25th out of the 100 couples. Next time I need to spend at least a little bit of time running in the sand as preparation but otherwise was pleased with the result as I've run only about 4 times since having Jonas. There's more action pics here and here.

Afterwards I got to clean off by spending the afternoon "chaperoning" a youth beach activity. I enjoyed spending the afternoon boogie boarding and teaching some of the youth how to ride. When I walked in the door to quickly shower and change before we headed out again for the evening, Whitney immediately met me and was saying, "It was an accident Mom!" I guess as Jim was getting the kids showered and cleaned up he had set Jonas on the bathroom rug while he dried off Maren. Whitney opened the shower door and not seeing Jonas there cut his head and hand with a sharp corner on the bottom of the door. Poor kid already being beat up by his sisters.

Eastern shore....

Jim's weekend climbing trip fell through at the last minute so we decided to take advantage of the two days off to head out to the Eastern Shore. Our ultimate destination was Chincoteague Island near the MD border but of course we had to stop and check out a disc golf course coming and going. We had fun playing the 27 holes and only Whitney ended up with a little bit of a poison ivy rash which is amazing given how abundant it was. We also had fun climbing the 3o foot rope we found up the tower of an abandoned ropes course in the park.

The girls enjoyed camping out that night and Whitney did a great job of starting the campfire with Dad. I guess he had taught her all about it on their last camping trip while I was at Girls Camp. This is Whitney getting the fire going to the correct/safe way and this is Dad showing how to do it the fast/Boy Scout way. The other two sat at a safe distance supervising the madness.

We've decided it's about time to buy a family tent after sleeping all five of us in our 3 man tent. The next day after swimming at the campground pool we headed to the Assateague Island Wildlife Refuge where the famous wild Chincoteague ponies are. We went on a 1.5 mile hike to where we could see some of the ponies and came across some other wildlife to include the rare Delmarva Peninsula Squirrel, a large black snake, and a few frogs.

Afterwards we headed to the beach for some combat sunbathing and swimming. I don't think I've ever been to a beach when it has been so crowded and this was late in the afternoon when many were already leaving.