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Monday, March 01, 2010
Ribbons and Walks
February 26, 2010
Today was ribbon day at gymnastics. Sammy started gymnastics again a few weeks ago. Our schedule in the fall did not allow for any after school activities, but now that things have settled down she is back to the gym. And this time I have a camera that can actually take pictures at the gym that aren't dark and fuzzy:
And here is a short video of highlights from tonight's performance:
And finally the ribbon. Sammy is getting a yellow ribbon again because she has only been back for a few weeks and hasn't had time to earn her red one yet (they go white for beginning, yellow, red, blue). She got her first yellow last May.
Art Class
I think I'm eventually going to add a page for Sammy's art work, but here is her creation from her third class:
A beautiful yellow rose in a vase. She decided to add the background after she had drawn the vase and flower - so she made a window behind it looking out on a pond with lily pads and some tulips in a garden.
March 1, 2010 - Pandapas Pond and Virginia Tech Walks
We started out by heading out to Pandapas Pond in hopes that the snow would be cleared enough for a walk. It was - sort of. The trails still looked like this:
The lower parking lot looked like this (we had to park in the upper lot and hike down to the pond):
My phone's camera didn't like all that white and it was too cold to bring the big camera and play with that. The pond was frozen:
And the geese are gone to replaced by these weird looking things:
I think they must be some kind of duck.
I did bring the GPS and we did plot the track, you can download the Google Earth file here. I learned that I have to have the GPS plot points more often and I need to keep it out of my pocket so that it doesn't lose the satellites.
After we left Pandapas we still had an hour before we had to pick Sammy up. We had heard that there are trails from the apartments near her school that lead all the way to Virginia Tech so we decided to try those out. VT has a huge Ag-Tech program and so they have thousands of acres of fields for cows:
Horses:
And other four legged animals like these donkeys:
And there are paved trails that lead through all of it. They also have vast fields of corn and other crops, but we didn't see those today. We walked all the way to the gazebo at the Duck Pond:
Where we looked at the Duck Pond:
and then headed back to pick up Sammy. Overall it was a nice day of walking.
I just realized that I didn't have any pictures of Owen in this update. Here is one of him sleeping - he crawled over to this pillow all by himself, snuggled up and went to sleep while Mommy was making lunch:
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
Art, Parks, Recreation
So, it has been a busy middle of February here at the Higgins house and I'll try to cover it all.
Art Class
Sammy has started art classes now. She has always loved to draw and paint and a local artist is now offering classes so we thought she'd enjoy that. Mr. Peter teaches them drawing and watercolors and Sammy is just loving it. For now, he gives them a picture to copy and shows them how to lay it out on the page correctly. I like him because while he wants the kids to remain faithful to the original picture in its proportionality and contents, he lets them be creative with their own colors and additions of extra items. In the first class she did a drawing of a crane:
And in the second class she tried out the watercolors on a crow - though she decided that she liked a blue bird better than the dark grey crow:
Given how grey the day was outside, I had to applaud her choice of bright colors.
Valentine's Day
Well, our first choice for Valentine's Day would have been to go on a nice hike, but the snow has made all of our hiking spots rather inaccessible. We would have had to invest in snowshoes to get through the parking lots, let alone to get onto the trails. So instead we opted to, Go Bowling!
I can't bowl at all, but I like to play anyway. Every few years we go and I embarrass myself with my score of 80 (Chris does much better) but it's still a good time and the lanes don't get snowed out. When we had finished our three games, we just had to hit the air hockey table:
Chris and I have been playing air hockey for 15 years now. I think I have won about 5 times, but I never stop trying to win just one more game!
Off To The Park!
Our yard still looks like this:
And our driveway is not exactly stroller friendly at the moment:
But it was 51 degrees yesterday and 58 degrees today, so we just HAD to get out and enjoy the weather. The best thought that we had was to go to Green Hill Park, which is down the mountain and into town where there isn't as much snow. The fields are still snow covered there:
But the walking paths and roads are mostly cleared so we could go walking. He is a blurry picture of Owen being happy in the sunshine...
And Sammy LOVES to stomp in puddles and all that melting snow means lots of lovely puddles:
We started out in our heavy coats, but eventually the coats got to ride on the stroller:
as things warmed up. We walked the length of the path, until we had to turn around:
when we hit a bit of the path that hadn't been cleared. It was sooooooo nice to get out and actually enjoy being outdoors again.
Back To The Park
Well, if Green Hill Park was nice at 50 degrees, we figured it would be even better at nearly 60 so we headed out again today. It's only a few minutes from the house so we can pop down for a quick walk. For those of you who are long time readers, this is the same park where they have the Kite Festival, the fireworks on the 4th and various other fairs that we have been too. Today though we brought the WHOLE family:
Dogs are welcomed at this park and Bob just loves to come with us. Yesterday it was still too wet and muddy to go down by the river, but today it had dried out enough to bring the kids down to the water.
I tried to get a good picture of both kids. I was as successful as ever.
"Owen, look at Mommy", Mommy says as she waves wildly to get him to look at the camera. Owen thinks this means he should wave back:
"Owen, look at the camera big boy!". "Mommy, what on Earth are you doing waving around like that?"
"Owen, just one little smile please...", Mommy begs. "OK Mommy, I can do a smirk, how's that?"
"Mommy, this shawl is really pretty..."
But hey, it was almost 60 degrees out, everything is good when you haven't been above freezing for a month and the sun finally comes out!
On the way home the three kiddos were in the back of the car. This is Bob thinking he'd like a french fry too...
What a beautiful weekend!
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
More Snow...
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It snowed another two inches last night. School is open, but we aren't going. Just for perspective, these pictures were taken at about the same time in February last year:
This morning's temperature 16 degrees with a 33 mph wind. Our high is supposed to be 29 degrees. Last year on this date our high was 66 degrees!
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Singing Through the Snow
I thought we moved South? Where it is warmer and it snows less, right? Not this year! It has been non-stop snow here in Virginia.
February 2nd
I forget exactly how much snow we got this day, several inches anyway. We had just barely gotten rid of the 18 inches we got back in December and here is another nice coating.
February 4th - 6th
Yeah, you read those dates right, three straight days of snow. It snowed like 9 inches, then it sleeted for a few hours, then it snowed another 7 or 8 inches. It snowed from Thursday night until Saturday afternoon. I know we didn't get quite as much as some people further East and North, but it was quite enough for us thank you.
The greenhouse is inaccessible:
so is the treehouse:
and even the birdhouse entrance is snow covered:
The whirlygig lady is too frozen to water her flowers. You can see Sammy though who is happy to be outside in any weather and is working on a snowman or something out there.
Bob loved the snow of course - he is just a blur as he frolicks through the white stuff:
We thought that the name "Dogloo" was cute when we bought his dog house...now it means it quite literally:
Owen watched the snow fall on the deck that his Daddy had just shoveled off, it would be covered again in a few hours:
And yes, that's Owen standing all by himself at the window for quite a while!
The annual Songfest was canceled in December due to the ginormous amount of snow that we had then. They managed to reschedule it to one day in between the snow storms. The concert didn't start until 7:00 so we decided to make a night of it with Sammy. We took her to the Outback before the concert:
And here they are all lined up getting ready to sing:
And here they are singing their little hearts out (or as much as they could considering it was a half an hour before bedtime)
Finally, Mommy needed a set of shelves so that she could get her camera and discs and other junk off her desk. Sammy loves to paint and I knew that she was going to be stuck inside alot with all the snow so I bought a cabinet for her to paint. She did a wonderful job:
And so we are up to today, February 9th and guess what? We woke up to 3 more inches of snow. And school was closed, and it sleeted and froze rain all afternoon! I didn't even have the heart to take a picture of it, let's just say that there is now a tremendous amount of snow out there.
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