Canaan Valley, WV

West Virginia.  Who knew it's beautiful?  Apparently our friends did, because they planned a trip there for Columbus Day weekend.  And they invited us to come along.  Friends like that are awesome.



Altogether we had three Air Force families: 6 adults, 8 kids.  Two of those kids were two year-olds.  The oldest kids were 6 years old.  Are we brave or what?  We headed out to the middle of nowhere in the mountains of West Virginia to a "cabin" on the slopes of the Canaan Valley ski resort.  And when I say "cabin" I actually mean "super-cool mountain ski resort home that is approximately three times the size of our house".


It's not currently ski season there; it's fall-foliage season.  It was beautiful.  Did I mention that already?  Our house was maybe a 50 foot walk from one of the ski slopes, which made for really nice hiking.  We rode a ski lift to the top of the mountain and then back down (well, OK -- I stayed home with a napping Colin for that adventure, but the others went!).


We drove to the nearby Blackwater Falls State Park and saw more pretty scenery.


The kids played nicely -- all weekend long.


The gentlemen cooked dinner.  Breakfast, too.  Turns out they all like to cook, but none of them have time anymore.  We ladies were not upset to hand over the duties for the weekend!


We enjoyed the beautiful foliage and even spotted a few deer.  We drank wine and/or beer and escaped the stresses that are a natural part of life in the DC area.


It was so wonderful, in fact, that I almost threw the only temper tantrum of the vacation when it was time to leave.  I really didn't feel like coming home and leaving behind that awesome house and beautiful scenery.  We may have to go back again next year!


PS - With three families snapping pictures, we ended up with lots of neat ones.  Click here to see more cute kids and pretty views!

Taming the bird

The taming of the feral parakeet has begun, and she's doing pretty well.  Isabelle is not a huge fan of any of us, but she likes us to be in her room (aka the playroom).  She's getting better at perching on a finger, so we've let her out in the playroom a few times to get some exercise.  She's only out for very short periods of time, though, since she's not potty-trained! Even Claire and Maddie can get her to perch on a finger, which is lots of fun for them, though Colin gets a bit ticked because he doesn't get to try yet.  I'm so glad she found our backyard feeder -- she's turned out to be a fun little pet!

 *Letting Isabelle have a look out the window*

Fairies in the park

We just got back from Maddie's (oops, Madeline's) Tinker Bell birthday party at Lake Accotink Park.  Yes, I planned another party for her outside.  Never mind the fact that in years past it has ALWAYS rained on the day of this child's birthday party.  Maddie was due some good weather and this year she got it!

We don't know many folks here yet, so we invited her whole preschool class.  Clearly we couldn't have it at our house (have I mentioned that our backyard is made up entirely of mud?  Yep, barely a blade of grass but lots of dirt.  That's fine for 2 or 3 kids, but not so much for an entire preschool class...).  So off to the park we went.

The kids got to ride the carousel.

Twice.

And they got to play mini-golf.   That part was cRaZy (all those excited preschoolers wielding golf clubs!  Ack!) but they all seemed to enjoy it.  Especially Colin.

We ate cake and had a pinata.

The kids were happy.  I didn't have to clean our house.  Fun for all!

"Madeline"

Here's Maddie, all ready to start pre-K!  And since she's a big 5 year-old, she's decided to go by "Madeline" at school.  Sweet Maddie, you're breaking your mommy's heart!

Yes, you read that right, she's a big 5-year old.  Today was her 2nd day of school AND her birthday.  She got to bring cupcakes to celebrate.  How fun is that? 

She's really growing up.  We'll still catch her sucking her thumb from time to time, and I know I'm supposed to stop her, but it's really one of the only things that she still does from her baby days.  I'll admit that sometimes I look the other way.

Happy 5th birthday, Maddie-kins!  We sure do love you!

Claire's first day

 

Here she is, on her first day of 1st grade, her first day of all-day school, AND her first day at a brand-new school.  That's a lot of firsts.  Check out that brave big-girl smile.

 

And here she is when we picked her up at the end of the day!  Looks like she had a great time.

 And I know this is Claire's post, but I couldn't resist putting up this photo of Colin.  He's getting ready to pick up Sissy in his new raincoat.  I think it is just TOO DANGED CUTE on him and may just make him wear it everywhere we go, rain or shine!

Yep, we have a bird

Well, nobody claimed her so we bought her a cage. And toys.  And treats.

Guess we have a birdie named Isabelle!  Now I have to try to tame her.  Wish me luck!

Editing to add: she's much more active now!  She slept for 48 hours straight after we caught her.  I think the dog kennel may have been a bit dark for her.  Now she chirps happily at the kids and even plays with her toys.  I recently found this audio clip online of wild parakeets (aka 'budgies') in Australia singing.  I may have to download it - it makes her so happy!     

Mom and Dad's Exciting Adventure

I'd like to think that ALL of my parents' visits to see us are memorable and exciting.  We're fun, right?  And I think our kids are pretty cute.  We usually try to find interesting things to do when they come to visit.  But I suppose it's going to happen that some trips rank higher on the exciting scale than others.  I think this last trip will be right  up there near the top.  (Click HERE for a slideshow or click any of the photos)

To start things off right, we packed up and went to the National Mall.  Saw the sights.  Took some pics.  Had a celebrity sighting (Bob Dole).  Visited the National Museum of Natural History and saw lots of neat-o things.  Stopped at the Air Force Monument on the way home.  Whew!  That was a big day.




Then we hit the National Zoo.  We accidentally broke a few laws while trying to park, but then had a great time visiting all of the animals.  The zoo is located on a pretty good sized hill.  We got our workout that day, for sure.



Next up (cue the excitement):  a Pentagon tour for Mom and Dad while the kiddos and I went to the pool.  I dropped them off at the Metro rail station and they took the train into the city like a couple of locals.  I'm sure their tour would have been interesting enough, but then they experienced our 5.8 mag earthquake -- in the middle of their tour!  Some folks would have fled the building in terror, remembering that the building was attacked nearly 10 years ago.  My mom, however, is not one to be discouraged from sight-seeing, and they finished up the last hour of their tour (heehee - just kidding, Mom.  Most of the Pentagon folks continued with business-as-usual so they finished up their tour).  None of us Shea/Dermodys had experienced an earthquake before, so I'm sure they won't forget that tour any time soon!  Phil helped them take the Metro bus home because the rail was not operating efficiently after the quake.  After navigating two forms of public transport, they are officially more seasoned DC travelers than I am.

We also made it to the Udvar-Hazy Museum, which is part of the National Air and Space Museum.  And by "part" I mean the really super-cool part.  There we saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise, an SR-71, the B-29 Enola Gay, and lots of other really neat air and spacecraft.

Then we got to come home and start bracing for the other exciting event: Hurricane Irene.  As we know now, it ended up being nothing more than a pretty good storm in our neck of the woods.  But the forecasters weren't sure how it would go so we stocked up on a few things and prepped our house and yard for heavy winds.  Some friends of ours were evacuated from their house in Dover, DE, so they came to join our little pre-hurricane party too.  We considered buying the makings for "hurricane" drinks, but instead made do with some margaritas and beer.  The next night our friends moved on to another friend's house and the Dermody/Shea clan took to the basement to weather the storm.  We have some REALLY big oak trees with questionable root structures in our backyard and I really wanted as much house as possible between us and them if one decided to fall! 

Fortunately we weathered the storm just fine, though a nice generator is back on our to-buy list (I can't believe we never bought one when we lived in Altus!).

And during their visit my mom found time to do a sewing lesson for the girls and Dad helped them ride their bikes.  Mom did a bunch of crafts with the kiddos.  They even had a grown-up craft this time for us -- we made a bench!  (And by "we" I mean Phil and my parents - haha).

After the storm we were blessed with some beautiful weather, so we checked out the ruins of the Belvoir Plantation on Ft. Belvoir and relaxed a bit (which means we planted a bunch of daylilies in the front and back yards!)  before my parents had to make their way back to Illinois.



They had no idea what they were signing up for when they planned this trip!  But they took the earthquake and hurricane in stride, and they even promised to come back for another visit soon.  Love you, Gramma and Pawpaw!

Sitting on the new bench!

Isabelle

We have a lot of oak trees in the backyard.  This seems to make a wonderful sanctuary for many types of birds.  Phil has taken an interest in them and has been feeding them.  A lot.  Every time he comes home from Walmart or Home Depot he has another bird feeder or bird food or a new bird feeder holder thingy.  I usually just roll my eyes and give him a hard time about spending so much money on bird accessories.

On Monday morning Phil woke me up and told me to check out the new bird on our backyard feeder.  His bird feeder had attracted a beautiful bright green bird.  Bright green as in -- a parakeet!  We had a chuckle and Phil left for work.  (Phil thought that would be the end of the story.  Ha!)

The poor bird was not very outdoor-savvy.  (For the purpose of this blog, I will refer to the parakeet as a "she".  I'm not a veterinarian am not sure what he/she actually is!)  She was trying to hang with a bunch of sparrows, but she didn't know quite when to fly away and wasn't nearly as skittish as a wild bird should be.  She clearly did not have the skills to live out there.  So I decided to catch her.

I used a butterfly net in my first and second attempts at capturing the bird.  A tiny, plastic butterfly net.  It didn't go so well, but I did manage to get pretty close to the bird both times because she was so tame.  My parents were loading up their van for their trip back to Illinois, but they managed to find time to giggle at my efforts.  Finally Dad suggested I set up a box trap.

Yes, a box propped up with a stick tied to a string, just like Wile E. Coyote uses to try to catch the Road Runner.  I laughed.  And then I set one up.  The problem is, the parakeet didn't come back.

Two blackbirds did manage to catch themselves when I wasn't looking, though!

Then I got the bright idea to play some parakeet songs on the computer to attract the right kind of bird.  Sure enough, when I started playing a little parakeet song (thanks, youtube!), she flew right back into the yard.  Twenty minutes later she wandered into my box trap and I caught her.

Woohoo!  I caught her!  

Ummm.  Now what???

We put an ad on Craigslist's lost and found section so we'll see if anyone responds.  And I've been searching all of the lost and found ads I can find to see if anyone is looking for her.  But in the meantime Claire has named her Isabelle.

She named her.

We may have a pet parakeet.

 Here's Isabelle in her improvised cage - Bailey's kennel!

PS - thanks to Heidi for the plastic bin I used for the box trap.  I promise I'll wash it up before getting it back to you, Heidi!

Catching up

I'll get to Mom and Dad's exciting DC adventure shortly - just have a little catching up to do first!  Stay tuned...

Thomas the Tank Engine

Our little Colin-man has definitely jumped on the Thomas band wagon.  He likes his choo-choos and knows them all by name.  It's really cute to watch him play at his train table, since he's starting to make the trains talk to each other.

With just a little bit of research, I discovered that Thomas was actually coming to a train station near us this summer.  Awesome!  The girls had both been to see Thomas before, but they were pretty young.  Needless to say, all three kiddos were pretty excited to see the famous train.
 

It's Sir Topham Hatt!

I think it blew Colin's mind a little when he saw Thomas -- in REAL life!  All through the train ride, Colin kept informing us that we were on Clarabel.  For all you Thomas-newbies out there, Clarabel is one of the passenger cars that Thomas pulls.

Colin is feeling shy around Thomas

Happy to be riding on Clarabel

Then we hopped on a different train - this one was a diesel; Thomas is a steamy - and took a slightly longer ride to an old gem mine. This train's passenger cars were the double-decker type. They looked awfully familiar to Phil and me. When we asked the conductor about them we discovered that they used to be passenger cars in Chicago. No wonder they looked familiar - they were just like the ones we rode on the North Shore line.

At the mine we got to pan for real gems!  Everybody had fun finding their gemstones and then trying to identify them, and we even got to take home our new jewels.  Definitely a fun time.

Luna moth

Check out what we found in our backyard today!

The kiddos were outside playing and I was gathering up sticks to put into a pile.  Yeah, I was gathering sticks.  There are a bunch of oak trees in our backyard and they like to drop large, pointy sticks in the backyard for my kids to hold while running (ack!) or to poke each other.  Anyway, as I was throwing them into a pile I almost threw them right onto a baby Luna Moth!

Luna moths are so BIG and beautiful.  The last time I think I saw one was at my grandparents' farm in Indiana and I was probably somewhere around Claire's or Maddie's age.    

This guy must have just come out of his cocoon.  His wings weren't dry yet and he was looking for somewhere to hang.  The girls helped me get him to crawl onto a stick and we walked him over to a tree.  He hung out there all day long, drying his wings and getting ready to fly.  Here's hoping he has a nice life! 

Just Ducky

It seems like whenever we move we end up with this weird situation in which we:
1) Wish we had less stuff and want to sign ourselves up for the show Hoarders; and simultaneously
2) Need to go out and buy MORE stuff in order to make the new house just right.

I know, it's weird, right? 

Usually the new "stuff" that we require is mostly in the organization category: shelves, bins, hangers/hooks, and maybe a bookshelf or piece of artwork (I use the term "artwork" loosely - we buy from Target and Ikea).

This time we had to buy all of that stuff AND a new shower curtain.  You see, once upon a time we had two fairly tasteful shower curtains.  One for the master bathroom and one for the kiddo bathroom.  We got rid of the one from the master bathroom when we moved to Altus because I got sick of looking at it (it was Phil's from before we got married) and both bathrooms had enclosed showers.  So we were down to one (incidentally, mine from before we were married...) and it went into storage.  When we were unpacking in New Jersey the shower curtain - along with all of our long term storage stuff - was scheduled to be delivered later because that's how the moving company rolls.  We had friends coming to visit and they were going to need to shower so I went out to Walmart to pick up a new liner to make do until the pretty curtain got delivered in a few weeks.  Only I didn't come home with a liner because this cute/tacky ducky shower curtain was on clearance!  Who can pass up a cute/tacky vinyl shower curtain for $5?  Not this gal.  So no need for my old shower curtain -- again!

Awesome vinyl duckies!

The cute/tacky duckies were fine in New Jersey, but here in Virginia they were going to be in our main bathroom.  The one people will use on a regular basis in our home.  Suddenly they seemed more "tacky" than "cute".  So I unpacked every box that my old shower curtain could possibly be in and of course we couldn't find it.  I figured we got rid of it in New Jersey.  Phil had never been a huge fan of it anyway, so we probably sent it to Goodwill.

I set off shopping for another shower curtain, with my old white chenille one in mind.  I finally found one online that was still duckies, but slightly less tacky - they're chenille duckies!  Woohoo!  Side note: Chenille duckies are totally classy.  Really, they are.  I found a free shipping code and with a quick *click* of my mouse it was on the way.

Then Phil unpacked a few boxes from the garage and guess what he found?  My old white shower curtain.  In with my canning supplies, of course.  Nice one, moving guys!  Way to keep us guessing!  Phil, being a guy, announced that it was OK because we could just return the new one when it got here.  Being the good wife that I am, I hung up the old white one and tried to like it.  Thing is, it looked... boring.  And colorless.

 So boring...

Then the new duckies arrived.  Check them out!  So much better, right?

 Admittedly not a whole lot different.  But I like it, dog-gone-it!

And I used the old vinyl duckies as a liner on the other side, so the kiddos can still see them when they're in there. 

Of course, we'll have to keep my old white one, too, because it would look nice in the master bathroom if we ever end up in a house that requires a shower curtain in the master bathroom again.

See?  This is why we have so much stuff.