Back in the campin' saddle again

WOW!  It has been since before Christmas since I blogged.  Crazy!  We have been doing lots of things, but apparently I could not get it together to blog about any of it.  :)  Winter was filled with LOTS of snow and coooollllldddd weather!  I am so happy to see the warm weather I just don't know what to do with myself.  Spring sports are starting and camping is back in session!!

Due to Mike's aneurysm, last year we did not have a great opportunity for camping.  We are hoping to make up for it this year.  Our Spring Break was this week.  It is coming to an end and we go back to school in two days, but it was fun while it lasted.

Each year we typically go to Florida over Spring Break.  Each year we pick a park or place to visit while we are there.  In addition to a particular park, we will visit my parents who live in Clearwater Florida during the winter and early spring months of the year.  As a result of softball and track for Emily and Ryan, we decided we just had too much on our plate this year and decided to stay in Virginia and camp a few days instead.  We reserved two nights at Jellystone Park in Luray Virginia.  This is one of our favorite campgrounds so we are trying to make it an annual tradition.

We left early Monday, camped Monday night, Tuesday night and packed up Wednesday morning and headed home.

This is overlooking the campground.  With the mountains in the background.  It was very pretty and sadly, this picture did not do it justice.

Ryan found this chain and then hooked it to himself as if it were chained to a wallet.  It was too funny.  Had to take a picture.

For the first time EVER, we decided to rent a golf cart.  We NEVER do this, but we seemed to be the only people staying there who did not have a golf cart.  We figured they must not be that expensive and decided to check it out.  We rented one, for just one night, and rode the thing until the battery was not longer charged.  We charged it overnight and rode it several times until we had to turn it in before we left.  Mike took a selfie while he and the kids were on it.

You were not allowed to drive the golf cart unless you were 18 years old and had a valid drivers license.  The kids were not able to drive it, but decided to pose as if they were able to take it on their own.  It was crazy.  They wanted us to drop them off everywhere and then come pick them up.  Even places that we were so close to that we could yell at a person who was there (from our campsite) and we drove them there with the golf cart.  Normally we would not have agreed to it, but figured since we were paying for it.  Was kind of like an amusement park ride.  :)

Lydia and Mike shot some hoops.

We rode the paddle boats.  Lydia had to ride in the back.

Mike and Emily drove Lydia around.

Mike realized, after we got to the campground, that we had forgotten fire starters.  We keep them in the camper and only had one left when we thought there were more.  Instead of purchasing more fire starters, we noticed that we had pinecones all over the campground and there was no fear of them running out.  The kids filled a trashbag full of pinecones and Mike decided to give it a whirl to start his fire with the pinecones.  It worked!!  Not sure if you can see the pinecones in this picture (maybe when you click on the picture to make it bigger), but they are there.  We were quite proud of this fire so we took a picture.  :)

It does not matter how many times I download pictures on this thing.  I am NEVER able to get the pictures to load on here in the order I want them to.  This is Ryan and me on the boats.

Lydia was the only one I could convince to get in the Yogi basket for our traditional picture.  Ryan and Emily are sitting and leaning on the golf cart in the background.  

This is the other Yogi in the campground.  We were on our way to play mini golf.  We played the mini golf course there about 4 times while we were there.  We should be pros by now.

The two movies, if you can see them, are from the famous Jumping Pillows that are at the Jellystone Campground.  The kids LOVE them!!  I have a movie from way back.  We were at this campground when the kids were much younger.  They still loved jumping, but Lydia was not a fan of jumping when others were jumping at the same time.  Click on "camping" on the right side of the top of the blog, and it will take you to camping at Jellystone back in 2009.  My brother and niece make an appearance in these too.  Love to make memories!!

 

The Best Day!

Have you ever participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange?  We have all participated in the "bring a wrapped gift to exchange" thing, but this year one of my kids is part of a Secret Santa where they actually drew names and are picking gifts for the person they drew.  Emily had so much fun deciding what to get the name she drew and shared this with her brother and sister.  The three of them decided we should do a gift exchange with our family.  I, of course, felt that this meant that Mike and I just needed to get gifts for the person we picked and no one else, but that idea was quickly extinguished by the kids.  They explained that we were going to do our gift exchange as well as purchase gifts for our children.  Not sure how they get off so easy as to just purchase for their name.  :)

We decided to do our shopping at the Dollar Tree.  I thought this was the best idea for "shopping alone" and being contained while doing it.  It worked out great!  The kids really did put a lot of thought into purchasing for their person and were so excited about wrapping their gifts last night.  It was too funny.  We are trying very hard to keep the persons name we drew a secret as well, but all three of them have accidentally said things a few times.  They do their best to cover their mistake, but it is just so funny!

After our shopping spree we finished our great day off by going to Boston Beanery.  Much to the embarrassment of my children, I asked our server to take our picture.  Emily, in particular, thought this was very embarrassing.  I suppose, what kind or parent are you if you can't embarrass your offspring.  :)

Prior to our shopping trip, we spent the afternoon on Skyline Drive.  We had a great day at church and then headed to Skyline Drive after lunch.  It was very cold and windy up there, but the sun was shining and it made for really great views at the overlooks.  We saw many cascades of icicles and had to stop and take a picture of one.

We also decided to walk down to the Diamond Falls waterfall, but it was pretty wet, icy and slippery down there.  We did not go all the way to the falls, but stopped at the bridge overlook to take a picture.  Was still about a mile and a half round trip (2nd half straight up hill), but did not want to risk the slipping possibility.  Such a fantastic day!!

The kids are now planning on their Secret Santa gift exchange for next year.  They are hoping to bring more people into it.  Grammy, Paw Paw, Uncle Paul, Aunt Allison, Penny, Adella . . . the names just go on and on.  :)  I love the days that we all laugh so much!!

Halloween 2014

I love Halloween!  I mean, how can you not love it?!   When can you dress up however you want to and be someone completely different than you are!!??  And, the reason for the season . . . CANDY!  :)

Ryan tossed around going trick or treating this year.  He decided, kind of at the last minute, to go.  His friend, Kendall, came with us.  We had tons of fun!  I think they were worn out from all the walking when it was over.  Not sure why--I was fine and I am the old person!!

This year we were a trip to the movies.  Lydia decided very early on that she wanted to be a box of popcorn.  She designed her costume and Mike helped her put it together.  We kind of talked Emily into being a fountain drink.  What other drink than an orange Crush (just like her Crush softball team) would make sense for her to be.  Mike designed and put together Emily's costume too.  She did the letters and put on the front.  The compliments were like no other year!!  Soooo many people commented and remarked on how cute the costumes were!!  People would ask us how we designed them.  The girls would even get extra candy sometimes because they were so cute.  We told everyone that Ryan and Kendall were the actors in the horror movie we were seeing on our trip to the movies.  They did not seem to understand why they did not get the comments the girls did.  They thought their costumes were stellar.  I had to explain that scary is too ordinary at Halloween.  Original is the way to go.  :)  Definitely a winning costume year!!

So on Track

The weather has been so weird this year!  I am sitting here at work in capri pants and a short sleeve shirt, but just two days ago I was bundled up in a heavy coat and long pants.  A few weeks ago (November 1), Mike took our family to a JMU football game.  These are not something that we do too often.  We tend to go to the basketball games, but not the football for some reason.  We mainly wanted Ryan to see the marching band since he is in band at school.  We thought it would be neat to see a band that has it together and is MUCH larger that the Elkton Middle School band.  :)  He was impressed.  He kept commenting on the fact that they were "really on track."  I did not know what this meant for a bit, but then realized he meant, in my language, in sinc with each other.  I said "are you guys usually on track?"  "Sometimes" was his comment.  I think he enjoyed it.  Sadly, it was so cold and had rained the night before so the bleachers were very cold and damp since we did not have enough towels to dry off really well.  We made it thorough halftime and left.  We saw what we came to see though.

Before we went into the game, we ran into one of my former students--Josh Calderon.  He is a tuba player in the marching band.  It was great!  The kids took their picture with him for me.  Not sure they wanted to, but they did without a gripe.  Besides it being such a cold day--we had a lot of fun.  And . . . JMU ended up winning!  After we left they started winning.  :)

Adella turns 8!

Ryan and Adella bowling at the same time.

 Last weekend the kids and I traveled to Richmond to celebrate my brother's daughter's 8th birthday.  She celebrated at a bowl america.  My kids love bowling and were able to play several games while they were there.  They also got to play with Adella's sister, my other niece, Penny.  Penny is 4 and really took advantage of the aiming stand that bowling allies provide for their younger patrons.  It was too funny!!  Fun day!  After that, we met up with Michelle and Trevor and their boy girl twins, Sydney and Grayson.  Love them!!

Fun Friday

Last Friday the kids had a day off school for teacher a teacher work day.  I took the day off and we took the opportunity to hang out with my friend Rabia and her kids.  The weather was amazing!  We spent some time riding bikes at the park, had lunch there and the kids played for a while.  It was a lot of fun!!  After park fun all afternoon, we introduced Geocaching to Rabia and her kids.  They loved it so much that she actually blogged about it on her blog.  Instructions and explanations and everything.  Check it out . . .

http://www.thelieberfamily.com/2014/10/x-marks-spot-geocaching.html

Love hanging with Rabia and her family and we don't do that nearly often enough.  Used to be very often, but now we no longer work together.

One of the caches was at our local camel farm.  Was too funny!!  The closest I had ever been to a camel.

Benjamin had to help with getting the cache out of the tube because we did not understand that we had to bring water.  :)

There were horses there too.  Was a really fun day!

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

Since she was three years old, Emily has worn eye glasses.  Infact, one of the ways I would tell people who was who with my twins is to say "Emily wears Eyeglasses.  E for Eyeglasses"  When she got her glasses her eye doctor explained that she does not have a vision problem, but that one of her eyes simply crosses and shuts off a certain part of her brain when it does.  This would happen often at that time.  He also explained that Emily had a 50% chance of outgrowing this problem when she as about 10 or 11 and a 50% chance that she would have to wear glasses or contacts for the remainder of her life.  She had to wear patches, drops in her strong eye to make it blurry so that her weak eye would get stronger.  She hated patches and the drops eventually started giving her headaches since it kept her eye dilated all the time.   

She started off with wire frames that had pieces that went behind her ears.  We hoped this would prevent an active 3 year old from them falling off her face and she step on them.  Mike and I have never worn glasses so we never really knew when to adjust her glasses (since she really didn't know how or when to tell us) until we would see her eyelashes curling up inside her lenses.  It was really bad!  A couple of years ago she decided she wanted a pair of plastic frames.  I had a good friend who wore the plastic frames and loved them.  We got her those and she was much happier.  She has her athletic glasses for softball and gymnastics and we don't know her without them. 

Two weeks ago she came home from her eye doctor appointment with a huge smile on her face.  Mike had taken her to the doctor.  She looked at me and Mike said something about "look at what is missing."  I looked at her and she was smiling just like this. The doctor told her she only has to wear glasses at school and when she is working on things that are up close.  If she is not focusing on something close up she does not have to wear them.  No more athletic glasses and no more glasses at home unless we are doing homework or working on the computer.  She is so excited!!  We go back again in a year and are hoping that at that point he will tell us that she does not have to wear them anymore.  Who knows--this may be something she will still always have to have, but at least it is not constant anymore.  Can't tell you how happy she is.  :)

Emily at three years old when she first got her glasses.