Sunflowers

The kids wanted to grow something. I thought about our limited options, and remembered growing sunflowers as a kid. We forgot to thin them, so we have a lot, but now they're 6 feet tall, and flowering, and they look so good!!

Adding Search box

This is more for me, because I keep on thinking, now I know I've blogged about that, when was that?! But I have delved into the deep land of 'Layout' and found how to put a search box in. so if you know I've visited Shenandoah (Three times now!!) hopefully you can search Shenandoah and get all the low down on what to walk with small children...
I feel a huge sense of achievement, even more possibly than when I worked out how to vote for president. Happy days.

Soccer Season

...and a chance for my boys to express themselves through their soccer boots. I feel a touch like in the stores it is a race to the most larey for design of soccer boots. Mr 6 has bright orange soccer boots, and bright orange socks. I am left sort of shocked in the background, pulling my credit card out to pay - he chose what?!
By contrast, the little one, initially wanted pink socks, then wanted blue socks (he has his brothers hand-me-down black socks), and chose (choice of two, because I was afraid his brain would explode otherwise) the blue boots over the sort of neon yellow boots. But I have to wonder, where in the world is all this neon leading to? and, Why?

Blue Moon

This is a Belgium style wheat ale from Colorado. It is very enjoyable, but a bit more expensive than Yeung Ling, so I'm not sure it will be a regular.
At the moment, they have art works instead of a label, which is really very pretty. I could easily hang some of the art works on my wall.

Chocolate and bacon??!!

We are not trying this one. Some things just shouldn't be attempted.

Update - September 4th - after sampling some the store had out for people to try: This tastes like really good chocolate stored too close to bacon, in the same way that a vanilla muffin stored next to a banana muffin has a banana aspect.

Truck Parking

The phone wasn't dealing so well with the contrasting light in the carpark, but you can clearly see this rather magnificent truck is jutting out into the carriage way by a good nose plus front doors. One of the problems with long wheel base vehicles being semi-normal on the roads - how big is the standard carpark? We have noticed the carparks are wider here, good when you have a 'minivan' (people mover). But I'm not so sure they are longer (well, not this long)!

Year 1

And I'm starting to really feel the years slipping away now...

lego and Aunties

Fresh ideas into the lego land upstairs. The sticking point was having water and fire on the same vehicle. As well as a hose that wasn't a fire fighting hose. There was lots of giggling involved.

The Dinosaurs are gone...

Visiting Washington DC again with visitors. We walked around the tidal basin which was really quite enjoyable, I am looking forward to doing it next cherry blossom season!
We dashed off to the Museum of Natural History in DC a while ago because we were told the dinosaur bones were being cleaned and the display renovated. Well, they certainly are renovating. The dinosaur skeletons left (the triceratops and the T-Rex) are behind the insect zoo, which is not easy to get to. But we enjoyed exploring a bit more of the museum on our way to try and see them.
Photo is of the baby measuring up to an elephant leg. He dressed himself this morning.

Mikes Crab House

Request for crab feast!! We were happy to oblige. Our server earned his 20% by giving the boys some watermelon from the corporate crab feast that was sharing a space with us. Happy days. My tip for restaurants is to start putting cheap pieces of watermelon on the menu.

Fake Trees

I think mobile phone towers have reached a new low with this one that we saw in the parking lot near our school today. I'm not sure the mobile receptors are visible, but this is a huge, fake, wrong looking tree...It is going to really stick out in the fall.

More farm peaches (after more beach)

Possibly our last visit to the beach this summer, seeing as school starts next week...and our last fish and chips... and our last peach farm visit, and our last huge icecream.
Sea was a bit quieter when we arrived, so both kids got to go out with dad and get wet. Unfortunately they insisted on wearing goggles and we lost a pair, dropped in the ocean.
I took a photo of the peaches with an apple for size.

New display in the Capitol building

New display in the Capitol paying homage to George Washington's resignation. with a slightly unexpected full size statue of the man himself in the position he took (allegedly). The lady upstairs is some lady that we know watched, because she wrote to her mum and told her all about it.

New Heights of Gourmet. Scrambled eggs with cheese -

 - and Old Bay. Really. Requested by the baby, on every bite. Occasionally he would alternate with tomato sauce.

Scooter

We got Mr 6 a scooter for his birthday. Two things I have been surprised by:
1) The speed that Mr 6 has acclimatised to it, and started thinking trick shots
2) The insistence of the baby that the scooter is for sharing, and that it wasn't a birthday present, and that he should have equal turns in it.

Bath Crayons

The boys were very keen on these, and that was great, but the crayon only comes off with the application of soft soap and elbow grease...So we won't be pulling these out unless we need to clean the bath.

Mr 6

Another year, another crazy birthday cake. He wanted swirls of blue and orange. Initially we were trying for big swirls, but that didn't work so well, so we learnt about the value of changing our minds and trying something different (as well as about refrigerating butter icing if it was going to sit for any amount of time on the bench while the cake cooled).
We had 6 children and water games out the back this year. Lots of fun!

Weird Japanese food

No idea what was in this, but very nice...

Pretty Flowers

I love the attention to gardens, and in particular flowers, during spring and summer. First bulbs, then pansies, then other things (I can't name them all...). Especially around entrances, and signs for the different communities. Downtown Annapolis even has hanging baskets of flowers on all the street lights. A popular arrangement is to get a window box or large pot, and fill it with a range of flowers and decorative grasses/things.
These are a couple of blocks away from our place.

S'mores in our backyard!

What an achievement - we finally used the little old grille passed on by a neighbour, bought some briquets (charcoal lumps?) and made s'mores on the grass out the back of our place after dinner. Happy days.
This photo is of the charcoal lumps heating up in the charcoal jug we borrowed from friends (then you pour them into the BBQ when they're hot).

70th Annual Annapolis Rotary Crab Feast

Imagine 2500 people sitting at long tables in the concourse bit of the Navy Stadium, eating all you can eat crabs, corn, crab soup, and hot dogs, and pulled pork (for those sick of crabs). Beer, soda and water provided too. Lots and lots of fun!! Very well run by the local rotary club as a fund raiser.

Our kids ate about three crabs worth each. I felt like I was better at giving the baby a cleaned crab and then just pointing out the bits he could pick out - although he cracked open one crab with a hammer when we weren't watching and ate a mouth full of lungs and mysterious wiggly tubes.

American Houses - Brick Facade

Here is a type of a large house I passed by on a jog this morning. Brick facade, the two windows on the far RHS are a garage that is driven into sideways, although there is probably an attic/second story room above it. I think this is reasonably modern, not sure if it is typical, but I don't think you get them in Australia.

Things I like:
It looks like a storybook house
So much space!
Symmetrical
No huge garage to dominate the front facade.
They just have roof, rather than the muddled roof line of some modern Australian homes
The shutters on either side of the windows
This house, like most houses, will be insulated to within an inch of its life. Most houses round here get quite hot in summer, because the heat just can't escape. but they do stay warm in winter.
I assume there is a basement, I love basements!

Things I don't like:
The facade is a little obvious in this house, as it is approached from the side
It doesn't have a long drive way of mature oak trees (just me!!)
No garden attempts at all.
No side windows, so can't catch all breezes
No fences, so not good for letting kids play outdoors without supervision.

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, VA

Part of Wilderness Battlefield. Dense trees on left. You can still see trenches in the woods.

This park covers four separate sites - Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Wilderness and Chancellorsville. The battles weren't all at once, or even sequential.
Fredericksburg - December 11-13 1862 - Confederate victory. Union fighting uphill against dug in Confederate troops behind the town of Fredericksburg. Town of Fredericksburg shelled and looted by Union Army on their way through.

Chancellorsville - April 27- May 6 1863 - Big victory by outnumbered Confederate army. Celebrated 12 mile march to carry out surprise right flank attack. Unfortunately, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops coming back from a night-time scout, and died of pneumonia on May 10 as a result of his wounds. Robert E Lee lost his best general, and history shows (according to the National Parks Brochure that i am sourcing from) he struggled after that.

After this, Lee went on offensive to Gettysburg. The union roughly sort of won this one, but the cost to both sides was such that no one really came out on top.

The Wilderness - May 5-6, 1864. A year later, the two sides met again, in a bit of land called the Wilderness - an area of land with a thick forest that had been logged and had lots of regrowth, undergrowth, etc, with small farm plots (cleared fields) scattered about. This one was a stalemate, with 30,000 killed, wounded or missing in two days.

Spotsylvania Court House - May 8-21, 1864 - stalemate. Lee dug in and held on until Grant abandoned the field. They were fighting over an important cross roads that controlled the most direct route to Richmond, VA (capital of the Southern states). Fighting here was considered most desperate in the whole war.

We only had a few hours, so we visited The Wilderness and Chancellorsville (both sort of briefly). We also visited the Old Salem Church, scene of the Battle of Salem Church, May 3-4, 1863. What was interesting about this church was the side door for black people, with an enclosed staircase leading to the right gallery, while the left gallery was for the women and children.
It was used as a place of refuge, then a battle, then a field hospital (surgeons treated both sides together here), so the congregation, which has moved into a larger building next door, had a lot to clean up when they returned after the Civil War was over.

Shenandoah National Park - South River Falls

This is a moderately strenuous (1.3 miles down, 1.3 miles back up) with a couple of add ons if you're interested in doing more than 2.6 miles. We weren't. So we only saw the top of the 83' falls, which wasn't 100% spectacular, but our party wasn't up to the extra 1.3 miles (and another couple of stories down) to get to the base of the falls. I have no regrets, thanks to this lovely creek that you walk beside for about 0.5 miles. It was everything a creek should be - meandering, singing, full of snags and rocks and interesting bits. This walk took us through a unique ecosystem called Appalachian Rich Cove Forest, only found in Shenandoah.

This is also Rattlesnake territory (big sign at start of walk) but we didn't see one (much to Mr nearly 6's disappointment). We had our plan all worked out too, if we saw one, we were backing away from it then zooming in with the camera and taking a photo (his idea).

Shenandoah National Park - Rose River Loop Trail

I think we reached an important milestone this walk. Mr nearly 6 got independent enough about hopping about on rocks on the creek that he fell in. This is when we'd dried out, put back on the wet socks and boots, and gone to try to get across again, with predictable results, but at least we tried. He is full of ideas for next time. I should note I was just lucky in this photo. It was meant to be a photo of father-son time, not of son falling in creek for second time.
Tip - walk down fire trail first for this walk, the walk up hill through the forest with a child on you back is much more enjoyable.

Farm Peaches - Williams Orchard

We have driven past this sign on the way to Shenandoah in the past, but not today. And we got a lovely drive in a country lane, and a very helpful farm worker who sold us peaches and answered all the baby's questions at the same time: why are the peaches in a box? where did they come from? how did you pick them? - the answer to this one was very solemn, from one equal to another - 'with my hands' in a lovely southernish accent.

The peaches are huge, I'd say as big as an orange, and juicy sweet, although they got a bit bruised in all the travelling and handling. Loving the farm gate food, and gradually getting more confident about buying it.

Washington DC Zoo

Went to the Smithsonian run zoo in Washington DC. Saw a panda bear for the first time!

Also saw two orangutans climbing up a big pole onto the "O Line, where they can move from one enclosure to another, or just hang out up high. They have a loooong arm reach, and look very casual when they climb. Very happy to have met the Librarian!

Zoo is smallish, built on a slope like Taronga, Sydney. Worth going early in the morning in summer, before animals disappear into the shade.