autumn hiking

I think I forgot that I was back to blogging. Oops! It's been a month since I was in this space, and it just occurred to me yesterday, "hey, we're doing stuff around here, and I've not thought once to blog about it!" Mostly, we're taking advantage of the gorgeous fall weather and getting outside. Two weekends ago, Paul's aunt and uncle came down from NY for a visit, and we spent Sunday afternoon hiking at Hanging Rock State Park, which is only about 45 minutes from our house. The day was practically perfect in every way, and exactly what we needed after nearly 2 weeks of rain.

This past weekend was much cooler than the weekend before, but we braved the freezing temperatures and met friends at Crowders Mountain State Park. Crowders Mountain is about a 2 hour drive from our house, but between us and our friends' house. A great day trip for both of us. We chose the shortest trails since we had little ones in tow. They were troopers and hung in there for both of the short trails near the lake. We also played by the lake, skipping rocks and muddying sneakers, and picnicked near the lake, even cooking hot chocolate on the little camp stove. The best way to spend such a lovely autumn day!

a National Park obsession

Over the last couple of weeks, Finn's 3rd grade class studied various parks that are part of the National Park Service. What a timely study since we were already planning to spend the weekend in between in Shenandoah National Park! Shenandoah wasn't the particular park that Finn studied and made a poster advertising, but he was thrilled nonetheless. (He actually studied Colonial National Historic Park, a mere 4 hour drive from us. We might have something up our sleeve concerning that park.) As part of their studies, Finn's teacher brought in her National Park Passport to show the students and then the students made their own passport books to stamp as they heard about each classmate's national park. Of course, when we visited Shenandoah, Finn needed to acquire an "official" National Park Passport, complete with requisite stamp. As he devour each page and map, he made a plan to visit every park in our state and surrounding states in the coming months. I'm not sure that we'll be able to follow his plan quite to the letter, but since one of the national military parks is right down the road from us, we spent a few hours touring it this past Sunday afternoon. Finn has actually visited Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (locally known as Battleground Park) many, many times in the past. It's a common walking area, and we often stumble upon reenactments here. Needless to say, he saw this familiar park with fresh eyes and his passport book in hand. We'll be visiting other parks as we can, including a few that were already on our travel docket before this providential class study. I'm looking forward to see how many we are able to explore! I'll tag them as National Park Service as I share them here. What are your favorite National Parks, Military sights, or National Monuments that we should add to our list?

Shenandoah in September

We spent Labor Day weekend up in Shenandoah National Park seeking relief from the heat and connection with the mountains before the intensity of the school year sets in. As we suspected, Shenandoah was just what we needed. Big Meadows Campground is one of my favorite places to camp, and despite the Labor Day crowds, we had a marvelous time. We scrambled over the rocks at Bearfence Mountain, wandered through the Big Meadow, lounged around camp, watched the sunset from Blackrock, communed with dozens of friendly deer, and generally had a marvelous weekend. As we did last time, we camped with Cindy of Zach Aboard and her sweet family. I'm always grateful for other sweet kids who enjoy our kids so much. Every time we see them, our kids immediately fall back into their easy way of being together. The time of course went too quickly, as it ever does in Shenandoah; we clearly need to find a way to visit more frequently.

On a side note, I've started dabbling in video. The video of our weekend in Shenandoah can be found here: 

Summers end

13 months.
That's how long it has been since I visited this space. A year full of beginnings and endings.

Among other things:
Paulie began high school.
Elizabeth finished her final year at her K-8 arts school.
Philip began middle school.
Finn began guitar lessons.
Paulie began marching band.
We each grew a year older.

Just this summer, we visited with friends at Hanging Rock,

Finn participated in music camp,

Finn and I visited family in Philadelphia (and met a new niece!),

the kids and I hiked the top of Pilot Mountain,

Finn lost a plethora of teeth and went to camp,

Elizabeth and I summited Mt. Evans outside Denver,

we fed large animals at Lazy 5 Ranch,

and we spent a week at the beach with friends.

I'm unsure how often I'll be in this space. I was relieved to let go of the pressure of blogging last summer, and I'm happy to be back now, in whatever capacity I feel works for me. Stay tuned later this week for details of new endeavors we're embarking on this year.

spring break at the farm

Elizabeth and Finn were on spring break last week. (Unfortunately, Paul and Philip lost part of their spring break with the snow days earlier this year, and the rest of their break is the week prior to Easter.) Since I had just the 2 of them at home for the week, we decided to head down to visit friends in SC who have a small homestead with chickens and goats. Farm animals, fresh air, and sunshine seem like a pretty great way to spend a few days of spring break! The kids played with friends, pulled and dried wild onions, ran in the sunshine, dragged the wagon all over the homestead, fed the chickens and goats, helped trim goat hooves, watered their burgeoning gardens, and largely avoided Steve, the angry rooster.