We have family in the area!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is no small thing - I think its a first since we headed to Colorado for college a "few" years ago. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

Scotty's cousin Callie and her husband Aous moved to the DC area recently. We were able to have them over for supper before we left for Virginia Beach. The girls chose to dress up for the occasion and also tranformed our library/quiet room (if you've ever had 2 delightful, healthy boys age 5&3, you'll know why this room is such a blessing to us!) into a Grand Poet's Hall (according to a sign they posted on the door). Christy spent part of the afternoon dusting it (bless you for coming up with this idea on your own, Christy) and then both girls recited several poems by Robert Louis Stevenson for all of us after supper.

Three snapshots of Cornwall

It may be a few years before I get some pictures and descriptions of our time in England systematically included on our blog, so perhaps I'll include a few here and there. Cornwall was our family's favorite part of England to visit. We found a real jewel in the Roseland Peninsula and returned several times.

Seth is sitting on a stile as we climbed the fence whilst out walking along the path. I took this when he and I were out for a night time stroll along the southwest coastal path just beyond our campground. This part of the path is bordered by a hedgerow but much of it which we walked on is just a few feet from the cliffs with nothing between you and the ocean but your good balance. We also have great memories of picking blackberries along the path.

The poppies were shooting out of a hedgerow as we drove by it one day. We often saw flowers growing in the hedgerows - daffodils, poppies, foxgloves.

There were also several small ancient fishing villages nearby - we sat at this harbor and enjoyed an ice cream from the local village store.

Jonnie's Birthday trip to the National Zoo

Birthday ice cream and popsicles (ice lollies for our English friends) at the zoo

I'm obviously pretty delinquent in posting to our blog. Sorry! I'll backtrack the best I can - on Sept 11th, Jonnie's 5th birthday, we took the metro into Washington DC and went to the National Zoo. We met our dear friend Myca Wehrli at one of the metro stations and continued on with her. This was a bittersweet outing with Myca - she and Andrew recently moved and so it was our last outing with her for awhile. We all miss her dearly. The river otters were the favorites of 3 out of 4 of the children. They could have watched them for hours. What about the 4th? It was the snapping turtle of which said child could have watched all day. Guess who? Yes, our Sethy :-) He has a quirky way of leaving his S's off of words if they begin with an "s" then a consonant - so to be most accurate his favorite was the 'napping turtle. If the "s" is followed by a vowel he pronounces it perfectly so he can thankfully say his name just fine. If I say 'napping turtle, however, he quickly corrects me by telling me "no, mama, its not a 'napping turtle its a 'napping turtle". So, he hears how it is supposed to be pronounced - he just can't quite say what he hears yet :-) I digress...

This was a Faith weather day! It was a cool, rainy day and she was skipping instead of walking most of the day. She will quickly tell you that the hot weather does not agree with her - she is much more suited for England's weather!

We spent a full day skipping through the rain to see the animals outdoors and then ducking inside to the reptile, small mammal, invertebrate, etc. houses when the drizzle turned to more of a downpour.

A great shot of the octopus - its hard to get perspective of scale from the photo (should have held Seth up next to it) , but it is quite large.

Yes, Jonnie, that baby elephant really does weigh 4,454 pounds!"

It seemed that on this Tuesday they had opened the zoo to only Jonnie's birthday "entourage" as we were often the only ones in the various houses. It was a very pleasant, unhurried day for all of us.

We stayed until late afternoon and then Scotty met us as we were making our walking trek back to the metro station. Seth fell asleep soon after we were on the metro - on Scotty's lap. A few minutes from the Springfield Station (about 2o minutes from home when no rush hour traffic) where we parked our van, it became quite obvious to Scotty that Seth did not have a naptime pull up on! We were planning on meeting friends for supper in Springfield, so, after we retrieved our van, we parked at the nearest Target and the girls and I went in and shopped the clearance racks for a pair of shorts and flip flops for Scotty and a pair of shorts for Seth! Scotty wore his t-shirt that was under his uniform with his new shorts, but wearing his no longer dry uniform pants was out of the question!
The calm before the "storm" :-)

After getting off the metro and the unscheduled trip to Target, we then met our friends Rob and Shauna Pittman and their children at the Silver Diner for Tuesday Kids' Night to top off Jonnie's special birthday outing and remember the lessons and heroes from Sept 11th. The local fire department brought two of their trucks and one of their ambulances for the children to climb on and explore. Two of the firemen helping out had responded to the Pentagon with the fire department in 2001. The others joined after 9/11. We thanked them all and I swallowed a lump in my throat each time I did.

Seth, in his cool new Washington Nationals baseball shorts, watching the firemen raise the tall ladder

Jonnie's not so sure of all the attention lavished on him by the wait staff as they sing him Happy Birthday! The Pittmans' son David watches with glee.

Happy Birthday to our precious son Jonathan. What a delight he has been in our lives.

16.75 miles...

...is the distance from our home to George Washington's home at Mount Vernon - according to mapquest. Also according to mapquest this drive should take 28 minutes - that is about what it took us when we drove there in the late morning. Today, I made the critical error of leaving said Mount Vernon at 3pm. Two plus hours later, we were home. Actually I stopped at a park near us to reward the children for their patience on our "drive". The commuting traffic was so slow and so motionless for most of the drive, I was at least able to redeem the time and read half of a chapter book to the children about a young Spanish boy who was Christopher Columbus' ship boy aboard the Santa Maria! I left at 3pm to give myself "plenty" of time to get us to Irish Dance practice by 4:15pm. Let's just say that after 5 miles and 50 minutes, I knew we wouldn't make it. I could read to the children because most of our time was spent stopped with a few non-reading bursts of a few feet at 1-3mph!

Highway 1 parallels I-95 and has several stop lights which doesn't help. By the time I had an opportunity to get on I-95 I'd been driving for over an hour and a half and just took Highway 1 home. Good thing - I heard on the radio later that accidents had clogged up I-95 south even worse than Highway 1!

The sad reality is that there were no accidents on Highway 1 today - this is the pace those who commute home from at least 3pm onwards go on a typical day. I just CAN'T imagine!!!

So, its very "cool" to live so close to Mount Vernon and just pop in occasionally for an outing to learn more about our First President since we have season passes. Choosing to leave at 3pm and negligently forget I live in the DC metro area? - NOT so "cool".

But, hey, we not only learned a lot about and were inspired by our First President, we also learned a lot about the voyage of Christopher Columbus :-) Did I mention I surprised the children with a drive through trip to Dunkin Donuts on the way to the park? Did I mention mine was glazed?

PS We've now found out Route 1 was backed up due to a wreck on I-95 which forced everyone on alternate routes. We were sad to hear about the wreck - it was a bad one, and makes our wait in traffic a very small inconvenence indeed.

Cherry Blossoms in the Spring

I think we went to see the Cherry Blossoms in DC on the perfect April morning. They couldn't have been more beautiful.

Nature Adventures

Scotty took us to the Prince William County Fair one evening this summer - the children were introduced to some pieces of Americana such as a demolition derby and a ferris wheel. We walked through the youth exhibit hall and they were inspired to join 4H and make some entries for next year's fair. We found a 4H club just 10 minutes from us and we attended our first meeting today. Faith is a regular member and Christy and Jonnie are Cloverbuds. Seth is our family mascot at meetings.


After the business meeting, the club's Junior Amateur Naturalist group met. The leader showed the children some model boxes with various insects, frogs, etc. at different stages of development. We then drove to a local farm and explored some water samples from their pond.

Our leader is the woman in the yellow shirt. She is a retired speech pathologist who has followed her passion for nature and now works full time for the County Extension Service as the coordinator of the Master Gardener programs. What a gem! I am so thankful for this opportunity. The picture above has all four of the Nowlins in it. They are using microscopes to get a closer look at the insects.

Christy was given the title "Best eyes of the group" as she used a sieve to find loads of different insects for us to examine. Faith was deemed "Master bug catcher" when we made our way to the pen of Llamas. After Faith fed one of the llamas, she caught this grasshopper and put it on the fence for all of us to study. A few moments after I took this picture, Faith told us the grasshopper had "pooped". The adults all oohed and aahed and said "Look kids!" whilst the children crinkled up their faces and looked away :-). Our wellies from England came in handy today - I got to wear mine too. Seth was fascinated by the "quick sand" mud and I think he made it his personal challenge to see how close he could get and still get his boot out. He failed twice and left his boot for me to retrieve. I was thinking that if we could just get this type of mud in a 10'x10' space in our yard, Seth would spend hours walking in it and get great exercise to boot.

We'll do some drawings for our nature journal this week. What nature journal you ask? Oh, the one we're finally going to start :-) Next month we'll be learning tree I.D.

Our friend Dorothy in England kindly asked us to post some pictures of the sights we see in DC on our blog. Dorothy, pond dipping is probably not what you had in mind, so I'll post another entry with some pictures of the cherry blossoms in April. Scotty took us into DC on the metro with him one morning so we could see them before he went into work. Gorgeous! Seth asked if it was snowing when he saw the air filled with the blossoms....

Jonnie's 5th birthday celebration

We celebrated Jonnie's 5th birthday today with the Naylor Family. Yes, he had 6 girls over for his birthday (7 including Katie who wandered over from next door) :-) A very fun, relaxing time was had by all. Above, you can see the Thomas the Tank Engine which Scotty drew for Jonnie. We played pin the steam stack on Thomas - much fun! Below is a group picture. Scotty hopped around on one leg in front of them all - acting generally silly - so we could get all 11 to smile at the same time. The Naylors gave Jonnie a pair of binoculars - can you tell?!?!?