Father/Daughter Dance

Friday was a big night in our house.  It was the first opportunity for the girls and Mark to attend a father/daugther dance.  The girls’ school was hosting the dance on Friday night, and Nina and Lyla were really excited to go.  Obviously, I’m a little biased, but I think I had the cutest trio at the dance!  :)  Mark said the girls had a great time.  They are so different in personality, and he said it showed through at the dance.  Nina was front and center on the stage, dancing up a storm (except when there was a slow dance and she came to Mark), while Lyla preferred to stay closer to dad and out of the spotlight.  The girls ran in after it was over saying what a great time they had, so I was really glad they had this opportunity!  

 

Easter 2017

Our spring break concluded with a beautiful day for Easter.  As is tradition, we went to church in the morning then we went out to Mouse and Pop’s house for play, lunch, and the Easter egg hunt.  This year, my mom got clay pots for the girls to paint and plant, so the girls got things started off by doing a really nice job on their creations!  After that we played a little soccer and volleyball then enjoyed a nice late lunch outside.  

 

Since the girls have made it clear that they are NOT too old for an Easter egg hunt, we’ve had to step up our egg hiding game considerably.  We used to confine the hunt to the yard surrounding the house, but this year we included the front and side field in addition.  It definitely gave us some more challenging places to hide, and the girls had lots of area to cover. I wish I could have snapped a few pics of some of the really tough hiding places, but the girls were chomping at the bit to get out of the basement and start the hunt.

While the egg hunt is all in good fun, needless to say, there is a wee bit of a competitive layer to it all as well!  :)

  

  

I loved the look of Mouse and Pops taking in the scene.  We are very fortunate to have a family that enjoys spending time together, and Mouse and Pops work so hard to keep up all the maintenance on their Haymarket house and the Hartfield house (while working to get the Golden Beach house on the market) so we can all gather there and enjoy making fun memories together.  

 

We had to banish Maggie and Cayenne to the house initially.  While we were hiding the eggs, they were sniffing them out and opening them to eat the candy that was on the inside!  So, we stuck them in the house, and while they managed to escape a few times during the hunt, we let them out for good once the girls had found probably 95% of the eggs.  Cayenne proved to be a pretty good egg finding assistant.  Lyla and Ryleigh took to following Cayenne around in hopes that she’d lead them to an egg.  In the picture below, she actually did.  If you look closely under Cayenne’s nose, you’ll see a hint of yellow in the grass.  That’s an egg!  :) 

 

While Cayenne was in search of candy, Maggie just wanted the bunny headband that one of the girls had been wearing and dropped in the grass.  She’s our Easter Brittany!

The final event of the afternoon was the “is it hard boiled or raw” egg smash on the forehead.  This was a favorite of the girls last year, so they had to do it again this year.  

  

Probably their favorite last year was watching Uncle Bo smash the egg on his forehead.  Again this year, he went along with their requests to participate, and again got a raw egg!  However, this year it wasn’t enough for Uncle Bo to participate.  The girls wanted their dads and Poppy to do it as well, and the guys obliged.  However, they raised the stakes a little bit and did it without the shower cap and trash bag.  Mark decided to throw it like 30 feet in the air and let it land on his head.  He did exactly that, and much to our viewing pleasure, it was a raw egg.  It was another great Easter celebration and a nice spring break, then back to school and the routine the next day.

 

 

 

Chincoteage and Assateague Isand

During the middle of our spring break week, we made a little girls' trip up to Chincoteague Isand.  I really didn’t have a particular reason for picking it other than I saw something about it on a website, found a good hotel rate, and the dates worked, so we decided to go!  Mouse is always up for our adventures, so she came along with us.  After getting to the hotel and checking in, the girls wanted to go straight to the beach.  Assateague Isand was right next to our hotel, so that’s where we spent a lot of our time.  Most of the island is a nature preserve, but there are also beaches for people to play/swim at.  It wasn’t swimming weather, but Nina and Lyla always seem to have fun at the beach no matter what the weather is.  It’s never easy to get them to leave!

 

Once we did leave the beach, we explored a little bit of Assateague by car and got to see the wild horses.  I expected there to be herds of them, but from where people can access, we saw small groups of them.  I’ve since learned that we were lucky to see any at all.  I talked to people who have gone there hoping to see them and left not seeing any!

 

 

Since it was after 3pm by the time we got to another large nature preserve section of the island, we were able to drive our car around a road inside that section of the preserve.  From what we could tell it seemed to be an area for bird watchers.  I’m not sure what bird(s) they were looking for, but you could tell that was the draw of that particular section of Assateague.

  

 

After exploring Assateague for awhile, we went back to the hotel to get cleaned up for dinner.  The girls found this little turtle trying to get into our room, so they named it and kept it for a few hours.  One of the housekeeping staff said there are tons of those little turtles around, so with two girls it was kind of hard having just one turtle, so we (well, really Mousey) looked and looked for another turtle to no avail.  Thankfully before the night was over the little guy got returned back to his habitat.  I’m sure he was much happier there than in the empty trash can of the hotel room! 

  

We had dinner on Main Street in Chincoteague, then we went to the Island Creamery for ice cream.  I read that the Island Creamery was a “don’t miss” stop in Chincoteage, and it definitely did not disappoint.  Their homemade ice cream was delicious!  Nina had Marsh Mud (chocolate ice cream on steroids), Lyla had Cookie Dough, and Mouse and I shared the Bourbon Carmel Crunch.

  

For day two, we decided to rent bikes to explore more of Assateague.  That was definitely the way to go!  There were a lot more places you could go on bikes than with a car, and you could cover a lot more territory on bikes than you could on foot.  The first stop on our little island bike tour was the Assateague Lighthouse.  The lighthouse was owned by the Coast Guard until 2004 until it’s maintenance was transferred to the nature preserve, but its light is still actively used for navigation by the Coast Guard.  It’s 142 feet tall, and we climbed steps all the way to to the top of it.  Our selfie is from the railing at the top of the lighthouse.  It does make your stomach a little jumpy to be up that high in small space though!

  

We continued to explore on our bikes and took a little detour off the official trail to explore a little by the water.  We were hoping to see more horses over there, and while we saw evidence that they had been there (large poop piles), we didn’t see any, but we did see tons of small snails and some horseshoe crabs.

 

 Before biking off Assateague for the last time, we saw the group of horses again.  The ponies have been living on Assateague since the 1600’s, and it seems like they enjoy a pretty nice life on the nature preserve with lots of land to roam around.

So, we can check the box on Chincoteage and Assateague for relatively close adventure trips.  I think Mouse and I's favorite part was exploring the island by bike, and I think the girls’ favorite part was playing on the beach and feeding corn to to the two ponies at the bike rental place. It was nice to have that little get away to combine with the hiking and the zoo from earlier in the week.  Once we got home late Thursday night, it was nice to have Friday to relax a bit at home.  While I was teaching on Friday, Mark took the girls fishing.  According to him, they’ve become quite the little fisherwomen.   They caught fish on Friday then wanted to go back out on Saturday morning - they didn’t have to twist Mark’s arm!

  

Spring Break 2017

For Spring Break this year, we had plans to be in town some and out of town some.  So, on the days we were in town, I tried to plan some fun things for us to do.  One of our favorites is hiking, so on Monday we went to one of our favorite local places for a fun time hiking, exploring, playing in the dirt, and getting dirty.  It was a beautful spring day to have some simple fun outdoors.

  

  

 

The next day we headed down to the zoo (along with everyone else in the DC area!!).  Being at the zoo when it’s crowded is much different now than it was when the girls were younger.  I remember in the past being very stressed when they were young and we were at places like the zoo when it was crowded.  It always seemed like it would be so easy to lose one of them while wandering away to look at something, getting separated in the crowds, moving around with a stroller, etc.  Now, even though it was crowded, we all had an easy time staying together, they’re strong enough to walk a lot in the heat, and I was relatively worry-free about us getting separated or someone getting lost.  It was very hot on Tuesday, but we had plenty of water and the girls made ample use of the misting stations and opportunity for Dippin’ Dots!

 

I was surprised that the big cats were active in the heat.  The tiger was playing with a large plastic tunnel before getting in the water, and the lion was up and walking around - even showing us his lovely teeth!!  

 

Unforatunately, the reptile house was closed, but we did get to see this guy hanging outside the front of the building.  We did take our time looking through the small mammal house and one of the most entertaining were the lemurs.  They were being fed by a zookeeper when we came though and were cute and lively.

  

This little elephant was one of our favorites. He/she put on quite a show with the trainer.  It was very cute!

  

 

The pandas - always a must see!

Thank goodness for those misting stations!  They definitely kept the girls refreshed over the hot afternoon.  It was a fun day at the zoo!