Friday, October 27
On Friday, the kids all went to the dentist for check-ups. All of their teeth checked out okay, and Blondie did awesome. On her last visit, she didn't let the dentist do too much, but this time she got right up on the chair and let them clean, floss and apply fluoride to her teeth. She just sat still the whole time and didn't make a sound. Blondie had been very excited about going to the dentist ever since she got a reminder postcard (addressed to her) in the mail over a month ago. Luke on the other hand kept fussing during his checkup and wouldn't let them take x-rays...
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Visit to the dentist
Blondie's pumpkin
Her comment while she was cleaning it out was, "Ewww, disgusting!"
(she designed the face herself)...
Monday, October 30, 2006
Pumpkin Fun!
Saturday, October 28
My brother Dan and his girlfriend Kami were able to visit us this weekend and help pick pumpkins at the pumpkin patch and then carve them later that day.
No more expander!
On Thursday, I got a call from M&M at school telling me that her expander had come off her back tooth. (I could tell she had been crying - she gets emotional easily about some things...) So after school I took her to see the orthodontist and he found that the wire had broken off the metal clip around her back tooth, so he decided to remove it altogether! M&M was quite happy. The orthodontist took some measurements of her mouth and he'll measure again in 2 week when we go in to see if her mouth has started shrinking again. Provided things look good at the next visit, I think she will be fitted for a retainer and be finished with the expander for good!
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Finally up to date!
As of right now, I am finally up to date on my blog entries! We accomplished a lot while we were in Virginia and it's taken me a while to get everything caught up. This was probably our last trip out there and we wanted to make the most of it. It also helped that I was not pregnant this trip and so I was able to do a lot more (my last two trips before this one I was pregnant). If all goes as planned, my parents will be moving out here to Utah in the spring or summer. We are so excited & looking forward to it! I never knew my grandparents very well growing up because we lived so far from them and I'm envious of the many people in our ward who have parents and family nearby. So, we are crossing our fingers and will soon be helping my parents look for a house out here to move into!!!
A new discovery...
Stretch Dad, Stretch!
Sunday, October 22
DH was a little sore from working out on Friday, so after church on Sunday, he asked Luke to come over and push on his back to help him stretch. Well, all of the kids thought that that looked pretty fun and wanted to join in. Even Kitty had her hand on his back and was saying, "Push!".
Harvest time!
Thursday, October 19
The kids had a lot of fun helping harvest the potatoes this year. We were pretty successful - we got three plastic bags full of three different kinds of potatoes. (We also got a few more carrots.) 
Some quotes from the kids while we were working:
"This is HARD work!"
"This is our best garden ever!"
"I LOVE digging for potatoes!"
M&M gets braces
Tuesday, October 17
M&M got braces last Tuesday on her front two teeth. She has had an expander in her mouth for the last couple of months to try and make room up top for her permanent teeth to come in. She lost the two teeth on either side of her front teeth almost a year ago now and the permanent ones never came in. The dentist took some x-rays and you could tell that they were stuck up in her gums with no room to come down. Now that she has had the expander in her mouth, her teeth are finally coming in. In the next couple of months the orthodontist will take out her expander and give her a retainer to wear. Then once all of her permanent teeth come in, she'll probably need full braces (especially on her bottom teeth)...
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Virginia trip wrap-up
We had lots of fun at Grandma & Grandpa S's house!! For the most part we had great weather and very few crowds because it wasn't prime tourist season. The kids were not very happy to come back home - especially since they had to go back to school :-(
Thanks for all the fun Grandma & Grandpa!!
Huntley Meadows
Sunday, October 15
I have been visiting Huntley Meadows Park for as long as I can remember. It is a large wetlands park near the house I grew up in where you can go for a walk and look for wildlife. The park has changed a lot since I was a kid and there is not very much water left in the park. There used to be beavers, lots of frogs and fish and snakes. This trip we saw lots of birds, including a great blue heron, and a few frogs. It's a nice short hike for the kids and it's nice to get out into nature a little bit...
Friday, October 20, 2006
Gettysburg
Saturday, October 14
Not to be outdone by Tan & Chez, we also visited Gettysburg. DH loves history and had just recently read a biography on President Lincoln, so we decided to take a trip up there to visit the battlefield with my parents. Gettysburg is less than 2 hours from my parent's house, just past the Maryland border into Pennsylvania. It turned out to be a pretty chilly and windy day, but it was interesting learning some of the history of the war and seeing the pretty countryside.
We climbed a very tall observation tower there to see across the valley. You can't tell how tall it is from these pictures, but M&M counted 121 steps as we were coming down. It was VERY COLD and WINDY up at the top!!
Gettysburg is an interesting place to visit because you drive around an auto tour of the battle site and can stop at designated sites along the way which have descriptions of what happened at that particular spot. All along the driving tour though, there are monuments all along the road which have been erected by different groups to recognize different groups/people that participated in the battle. One could easily spend several days there trying to see and read everything.
Holocaust Museum
Friday, October 13
DH & I left the kids with Grandma & Grandpa and took the metro downtown to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is definitely not a museum for kids (in fact they recommend only people 11 & up visit). It is definitely a sobering museum to go to, but DH & I had a good visit and it was nice to get a small break from the kids. The main exhibit is 3 full floors of displays about various aspects of history starting with what lead up to the Holocaust and continued through the immediate aftermath. There was a LOT of reading. We were there for about 3 1/2 hours and we were trying to hurry. We could have easily spent a few more hours there. Our biggest complaint about the exhibit is that they didn't have any wrap-up at the end (at least not that we saw) to talk about what we can learn from this and how we can try and prevent something like this from ever happening again. I thought that the whole exhibit was very well done and the areas that contained graphic pictures or video were displayed so that you had to specifically go over and view it (there were also "viewer discretion" signs around these areas).
Virginia Beach
Thursday, October 12
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Jamestown
Wednesday, October 11
On Wednesday, Cherylyn took us to visit Jamestown Settlement which is a recreation of the original Jamestown (Cherylyn used to work here). They have replicas of the Indian huts, the ships that the colonists sailed on and the colonist town. 
The kids really enjoyed this place because it is really geared towards kids and they were able to do a lot of hands on things. There were also people dressed up in period costume who were there to talk with you and demostrate different things. The kids liked touring the ships, carving out a canoe and trying on armor. To see more pictures, visit Cherylyn's blog entry: Fun With Family!
P.S. - Thanks Cherylyn for the use of your camera! (I forgot mine back at the condo we were staying at...)
Williamsburg
Tuesday, October 10
We drove down to Williamsburg for a couple of days to spend some time with Tan & Chez & cousin C. We had a lot of fun visiting with them and seeing some of the historical sites down there. Williamsburg is where DH & I spent our honeymoon just over 10 years ago now. 
The kids had a lot of fun trying to entertain cousin C and they fought over who could push C in his stroller. C wasn't too sure what to think about all of our noisy kids who were playing with his toys and invading his space. He was particularly drawn to DH and kept crawling over to him. 
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