February 14, 2025 Time For Three

 Grace (and a few others from RHS, HHS, and JMU) had the amazing opportunity to play violin on one song with the string trio “Time For Three” when they played a concert at the Forbes Theater tonight. The first picture is before the show, the second picture is her showing off all of their signatures that she got as she was thanking them for letting her play.

January 16, 2025 Crocheting

Grace had been wanting to learn how to crochet for quite a long time.  I had taught her how to chain and started with some stitches but she did not seem interested in it enough to  practice and keep it up.  Matt decided to get her and Glen a beginner crochet set from Woobles for Christmas.  This set has all of the yarn, fluff, eyes, hook, needle, everything that is needed!  It even included a link to their online video tutorials of how to learn how to crochet. 

I like to think that I started her off with the basics, but I admit that Woobles taught her how to crochet.  After a few day of work she proudly showed up Pierre, her blue penguin!  She knows how to crochet and she is really enjoying it.

January 6, 2025 SNOW!

We finally got a good amount of snow, and due to that we also got a SNOW DAY! 

Here is Glen with his sled.  You can see the hill that he likes to sled down (between the two houses behind him).

Here is Grace.  I guess she loves shoveling so much that she decided that she needed to shovel our deck.  Kind of not needed, but she was having fun.

I love when the kids get out and still enjoy the snow together.

December 30, 2024 Happy Birthday!

Happy 13th birthday to Glen!  Here he is with his favorite kind of birthday cake, chocolate cake with chocolate pudding layers with chocolate icing!   

December 19, 2024 Happy Birthday!

 

Grace at Back Home at the Farm

Grace in her colorguard uniform as she marched and performed with her high school's marching band.  Their theme was forged together and she got to dance with sledgehammers and dance on anvils.

Grace dressed up for homecoming

December 8, 2024 Holiday Parade

Tonight was the Christmas Parade in our town.  We have not been going to the parade for many years.  However, Grace and her high school band were marching in the parade tonight so we made sure to be there to see them. 

It was COLD!  But Grace's biggest fan (Glen) made sure to bundle up completely and still enjoyed the parade.

November 9, 2024 Opera

 

Glen's middle school orchestra has been working with the local college to see the process of putting on an opera.  They have talked with the actors and they also went to a rehearsal for the opera.  At the rehearsal all of the students were paired off with one of the actors and the actors talked the students through what they were doing in the opera.  Finally tonight Glen and I were able to go and see the opera at the Forbes theater as they presented it to the public.  We both loved it.

November 4, 2024 Freshman Homecoming

Grace is not able to attend her high school formal dance next weekend because is going to be in Washington DC performing the field show with the band and marching in the national Veterans Day Parade the next morning. So the band is having a band formal tonight.

They held the dance at an event space downtown.  It was a fun time for just the band students.

Grace told me about this dance about three days before it happened.  So I ran to the thrift stores to find possible dresses.  I found this green dress, which was perfect for Grace at a local Goodwill...it was quite the find!

She had a wonderful evening!

 

October 31, 2024

Happy Halloween from

Artemis and a wizard

 

September 15, 2024 Back Home On The Farm

 Every year we make an effort to go to Back Home on the Farm in the fall.  We have tried (and I believe that we have been successful) to go to a farm/pumpkin patch every year with the kids.  We have found that this one is our current favorite

I always try to get a picture of the two kids together.  

And I also always try to get a picture of them by the love sign.

Then the fun comes.  The underground hill slide is always a favorite.

They go on the slide over and over and over.  I am glad that there are picnic tables near by where Matt and I can sit and wait for them to do this activity as many times as they wish.

They also love the obstacle course.  There are always a few races between the two.  We stay there till they have fallen off the obstacles too many times and are just done with it.

Next comes the animals.  There are always animals to pet.  There are usually calves, bunnies, chickens, goats, ponies, and many others.

The other must dos are the pig races and the sling shots.  But I did not get pictures of those.

However, I did get some wonderful pictures of my kids individually.  They are getting so grown up!

September 4, 2024 Cross Country

Glen at his first cross country meet of this year.  He has improved so much from last year!  But just look at this guy, he is smiling while running...yet he says that he does not enjoy running.  I think he secretly loves it :) 

 

August 20, 2024 First days of school

 This was the first day of school!

Grace is in 9th grade at Rocktown.  She loves high school already!  She has been at band camp for the high school for three weeks now so she feels very confident going into this new adventure.

Glen is in 7th grade at Skyline.  He is excited for another year at this school (where I work).  He is looking forward to D&D club, chess club, and gym.  He is not looking forward to cross country which he has already spent two weeks training with.  He does not love running, but he keeps doing it and he is getting so much better.

August 7, 2024 Braces

 

Glen got braces!

July 28, 2024 Sandbridge

Had a great time at the beach.

We wanted to celebrate paying off the mortgage to our house.  So we decided to host a vacation.  We rented a beach house in Sandbridge, VA.  We invited all of my family and all of Matt's family.  At any one time we had about 15-18 people in the house.  It was a lot of fun chaos!

  From the house we could go kayaking in the bay or we could spend time at the beach. 

We also spent one day at the Virginia Living Museum.