Pumpkin Patch

The pumpkin patch is so much fun!!! There is loads to do there. We spent two hours playing before we even thought about the hayride out to pick the pumpkins! Ed's favorite part is the 8-acre corn maze. We also shot corn cannons, ran through haunted houses, dug for dinosaur bones, watched pig races, jumped on inflatables, well, just look at the pictures...

Neptune Festival

After the birthday party weekends, we took a hiatus to Virginia Beach for the Neptune Festival. What a fun time! As always, the sand sculptures were the highlight. There were many, but these are some of my favorites. Check out the tiny little intricate holes in this one...

This one of Adam and Eve with the serpent was titled "Love Lost" on the front...

And "Love Restored" on the back...

"Love Never Grows Old" won first place. You can't see all the lines and wrinkles in the old couple's face from this small picture, but they looked amazing.

Look at the folds in her dress!

This was one of my favorites - "Poor Planning". Check out the outhouse in the bottom right corner.

This was the back of "Poor Planning". Thought the archway made of spheres was very cool.

Tad LOVED the sculptures and was inspired to try some of his own after looking at the pros.

September birthdays

Fall is such a beautiful and busy time of year! Tad and Andy's birthdays were lots of fun. Tad had his best buddy over and did everything he could think of - Laser Tag, Chuck E. Cheese, and a Putt-Putt extravaganza, complete with bumper boats and go-carts.

And Andy took a group of friends to Chuck E. Cheese, where he was the star of the day. He ATE IT UP!

Haircut

Yea!! The long hair is gone!

Fall 2010

Matthias's first day of kindergarten. He loves his Spongebob lunchbag and is trying to look like him by sticking his front teeth out.


Starting 1st and 3rd grade.

Love our bus driver!

Ed had to be in on the first-day-of-school picture action, too.

Beach 2010

Two weeks at the beach again this year was wonderful! Two hurricanes passed WAY offshore while we were there. We got beautiful weather - not a cloud in the sky - for two entire weeks and got some KILLER waves for boogie boarding!


I had never seen waves this huge.

After being beaten by the waves, we spent time playing in the sand...

swimming...

fishing...

golf cart riding...

eating...

sittin' around...

and enjoying the view.

Summer 2010

We had a great summer, but it was a HOT one! If we were out, we had to be in water.

Of course we had our annual July 4th trip to Blacksburg.

Enjoyed some French Twists at Macado's.

Tad and Andy's favorite things in Blacksburg this year were eating at Dietrich Dining Hall and playing at the skate park.

And this year we took Casey along for a visit back to her hometown.

And July ended with the addition of two beautiful little girls, Lily and Sara.

Spring 2010

Our two big events this spring were a visit to Albuquerque with Matthias to visit my BFF, Regan,

And camping in Luray.

Happy New Year!

We had our crew over for New Year's again this year. We all had a good time together. Here are the kids preparing for the countdown to midnight.

And here's the countdown.

And at least an hour of CRAZY celebrating afterwards with music and lots of noise and running around. (Matthias is laughing in this picture, not crying.)

I overheard Tad telling his friends that his New Year's Resolution is to read things more carefully before acting. (He recently ran into some trouble on a computer game when he clicked something before he read the whole thing.) I didn't even realize he knew what a resolution was. Happy 2010!