Weekend Fun

Well, our "active family Saturday" didn't quite work out this weekend.  Micaela has all next week off and convinced Grandma to let her spend the week up in PA.  So instead of getting up and doing our outside activity, we got up, loaded up the car, and drove to Hagerstown, MD which, in addition to a great outlet mall, actually has a really good German restaurant.  Kurt and I enjoyed gluhwein and krystalweizen with our jagerschnitzel and bratwurst and the kids enjoyed seeing Grandma and Pappy.  After lunch Kurt, Jon and I headed back home after lunch and took naps / relaxed until the football games come on.  It was a great day yesterday with both USC and PSU winning their games :)  The gluhwein we had at lunch was so good that Kurt had the great idea to look up a recipe to make it ourselves and we went over to our neighbors to share the deliciousness with them (and they shared their delicious smoked turkey with us).  Overall, great day.

Since we didn't do our "active family Saturday", we decided that we would just move it to today, Sunday.  There is a small lake in the middle of Fort Meade called Burba Lake.  As I was driving past it last week I noticed a trail going around the lake.  I wanted to know how long it was, so Jon and I headed out there with a jogging stroller to measure the distance (.75 miles).  He liked looking at all the geese and I got a little exercise in.  To be fair to Jon and get him moving, we did a second lap around the lake with Jon on his bike.  He did really well and actually went pretty fast at first, but got tired halfway around and I ended up pushing his bike most of the way back.  At one point we got close to some geese / ducks who thought we might have some food for them.  It was all I could do to keep Jon from "petting" the geese.  Lucky for us, Fort Meade just installed a bunch of new playgrounds around Post, one of which was right by Burba Lake.  Jon loved the playground, but unfortunately no one was there that early in the morning so I had to run around and play with him.  It was still fun, but next time we go we'll take Micaela and then they'll really have a good time.

Oops, went a little off-road

Can you spot the goose/duck in this picture?

Saturday Mornings

Two weeks ago Kurt had an idea.  He was tired of lazy weekend mornings and thought that we needed something to get us up and moving on Saturdays so we starting Active Family Saturdays.  Basically, we get up and out of the house by 9am and do something outside or active.  For the first one Micaela had the idea that we should go out in the backyard and pickup all the leaves (really?).  That's what Kurt wanted to do too, so we bundled up and headed outside.  It was actually kind of fun despite the fact that Kurt and I did the bagging while the kids ran around the yard and played chase with the dogs or kicked the soccer ball around.  Still, it met it's purpose in that we all spent the morning together, outside, doing something.

This past weekend I had no desire to bag leaves (which are never ending) so I suggested we head over to the Piney Orchard Nature Preserve.  I found this place while running with one of my old co-workers and Kurt and the kids had never been there.  Its a series of trails (some hard trails, some dirt trails) that run through a nature preserve that was made around a few lakes.  Ironically these lakes are the result of a mining company that needed somewhere to pump groundwater.  It was still a nice walk though and the kids liked running through the woods and throwing rocks and playing with sticks and such.

Snow!!!

I've been a little delinquent in my blogging, but now that I'm home alone (whoo hoo!) I have a few minutes to catch up on what we've been doing. 

For the most part, we've been spending our weekends here in MD, just doing stuff around the house, watching football, and relaxing.   Occasionally we make the trip up to PA and do the same stuff up there - watch football and relax.  Two weeks ago we saw that they were predicting snow up in PA and Kurt immediately decided that we needed to go.  Kurt's parents were great hosts (especially since they had watched the kids the previous weekend while Kurt and I celebrated with Ranj in DC) and the kids loved the snow.

It is so nice having "older" kids - we just suited them up and pushed them out the door and they were content playing in the snow all day.  Micaela even got Jon off to an early start with the snowboarding.  I was impressed with how well they both did.

While playing with your little brother is alright, it's much more fun when cousins are around!

And of course the biggest kid in the family also went out to play.  I was content with taking pictures, although I did go down the sled run once or twice :)

Halloween Funnies

Recipe for a great Halloween:

1 x 11 year old
1 x 3 year old
1 x neighbor with a big bottle of wine and a couple of tumblers
4 x neighborhood kids
1 x patient husband

Halloween here isn't quite like it was in California (houses weren't decorated nearly as cool), but it was still fun.  Jon made it particularly funny.  Some of my favorite quotes:

"Mom. it's a wolf, hold my hand!" - referring to his friend Jack who had been trick-or-treating with us the entire time (to his credit, it was a sort of scarey wolf)

"Mom, I want to go home and lay on the couch and watch dora and take a drink."  Okay, buddy.

"Look mom, there's our house!  We made it around the world!"

Kurt - "We made it around China?"  Jon - "That's a bad word daddy"

Lake Placid

Well, it's Sunday. Kurt is at work and won't be home until well after I'm asleep. Micaela has packed all her clothes for CA, done all her chores, and is chilling out downstairs with the music we just uploaded onto her iTouch. Jon has played, ridden a train at a sort-of nearby park, watched some Dora, got a haircut (used Kurt's clippers), and is now splashing in the bath. I have made sure all of the above happened, done all the laundry, done a few household chores, and I actually have a few minutes of free-time (as long as Jon keeps playing nicely in the bath). I've decided to spend this free-time blogging since I've been so negligent lately.

Now, I should be telling you all the cute and funny things the kids have been doing lately, but if I don't write them down right away, I just forget.  Jon's a hoot though, and Micaela is just plain good and helpful.   If Jon does something funny in the next few minutes I'll be sure to capture it.

Okay, back to the purpose of this blog - our summer vacation to Lake Placid. Kurt and his friend Todd came up with this crazy idea to do the Lake Placid Ironman Triathalon. I think it was Todd's idea, I'm not quite sure how he convinced Kurt to do it seeing as how Kurt has never done a triathalon.. but Kurt's determined and has been working hard. We had to go to Lake Placid during this year's Ironman so that the guys could volunteer and get early registration for next year. That part of the vacation was kind of exhausting because the race starts at 7am and finishes at midnight and then there was the early registration. The rest of the vacation was nice though. The town of Lake Placid is very cute and reminds me a lot of Mammoth (one main street with one grocery store, one fast food restaurant, and a lot of little shops). We spend one day being the typical tourists and we got an Olympic Passport that gave us access to all the key sites. We only had time to visit the hockey rink, the downhill skiing mountain, and the ski jump area - but they were all great and we got some good pictures. I'm just going to post a bunch of my favorite pictures to give you a better idea.

Our Cabin (45 min from Lake Placid, middle of nowhere)

The screened in porch was awesome, Jon and Will did pretty well playing together

There was a small pond with a playground not too far from the cabin

 Micaela invited her friend Livy to come (which made the trip a lot more fun)

 This looks kind of scary... not sure what we were thinking

The Volunteers

The finishline, just before the midnight cutoff

 What you do the night after the "midnight finishline party"

Inside the Lake Placid Olympic Museum

Where the Miracle on Ice took place (I didn't really know about this until this vacation, perhaps I should watch more movies)

Shopping on Main Street

This is the view from a coffee shop we found while visiting the local shops - this is Mirror Lake, where they do the Ironman swim.  Lake Placid (the lake) isn't actually all that close to the town.

That same day we also happened upon a community band concert.  The oboe player was incredible.

 It's not a Weaver, Estes, Pedrick vacation without a game of wiffleball

The kids played in the woods while the guys played wiffleball and the ladies napped

They even found some wild blueberries that were really good

Picnic at Mirror Lake before touring the Olympic facilities

This is where they practice their freestyle jumps/flips, they land in a big swimming pool

Ski Jumpers are CRAZY

See comment above

This is the view from the top of the Gondola on Whiteface Mountain

That's Lake Placid in the background, and this was the only time we ever saw the lake

Possibly my favorite part of the trip.  It was a pretty tiring vacation, so this visit to the pub near the end was well timed.