Welcome

As we say above, this is mainly for friends and family. Michael's blog on the Middle East can be found here. Most of our other links can be found below on the right, but be sure to keep up as well with our family website, here. We also have discussion groups for genealogy, links to genealogical information on us, and our (semi-private) Flickr and YouTube accounts for those who are invited. You can also get a quick-navigation guide here.

Monday, June 22, 2009

They Grow Up So Fast: The Big Bike

Sarah's been biking for years — she stopped using training wheels at a younger age than either her dad or her mom did — but she had small-wheel kid bikes till now. A neighbor passed on a big kid bike (I think maybe 26 inches but she's out on it now so I can't check), so she's excited. We got it late last week but were busy with weekend stuff and I didn't get the seat lowered and chains adjusted till tonight.

Photo, as usual on the blog, not showing her face. Family who can see our Flickr site can see more, and I have a little video I'll probably post to YouTube.

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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Father's Day

A quick note: Father's Day is drawing to an end. A nice family day. Lunch at Frost's Diner in Warrenton, leisurely driving in the Piedmont and foothills of Fauquier and Rappahannock counties, then home; dinner at Red Hot & Blue.

But it's still Father's Day for a few minutes, and blogging is too much like work, so that's it for now.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

End of Third Grade; the Weekend

A busy three days. Two new videos up on the private YouTube site: Third Grade Awards Ceremony, and a visit today to southern Maryland.

Friday was the last day of Third Grade. An awards ceremony was held, and Sarah's certificates are on the video. Then it was a Daddy day; Tam attended the ceremony, as did I, but since I have Fridays at home and everything was over by 11 am, I had the day with Sarah: lunch at La Madeleine, a visit to Best Buy and Target to spend some of her allowance and a little extra "graduation" money (bought a video game), other errands.

Yesterday (Saturday was kind of routine. A little shopping, a short trip to Alexandria, then everybody got tired and we went home. Today: southern Maryland. She wanted to go to Solomon's Island, I said if we go to a favorite place let's do one new thing on the way, so we went to Surratt's Tavern Museum, a key site on John Wilkes Booth's escape route and part of our ongoing Lincoln bicentennial adventure. Then on to Solomon's Island for a brief visit to the Calvert Marine Museum before it closed, then ice cream on the boardwalk. Then home, and dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Tired; I'll try to catch this up another time.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

A Quick Weekend Report

It's late and I'm tired, but a quick summary of the weekend: yesterday we went to see Up, which Tam and I liked but Sarah complained about. Also shopping and errands. Today, a lovely day, we went out to Maryland — we asked Sarah if she preferred a drive in Maryland of Virignia and she said "I'll take the Old Line State" — she'd had to do a report on Maryland and knew the state nickname as a result.

We visited the Monocacy Aqueduct, where an old aqueduct carried the C&O Canal across the mouth of the Monocacy River where it flows into the Potomac; a two part video is up at YouTube. We also drove past Sugarloaf Mountain but Sarah didn't want to go up, and paid a quick visit to the Monocacy Civil War Battlefield. Not a lot, but at least we got out.

I discovered that the two parts of our Day 3 of the New York Trip YouTube posting were rejected by YouTube due to being over 10 minutes long, caused by a glitch I inadvertantly introduced. That's being fixed now, but I suspect day three of the NYC trip will appear above (that is, after) the Monocacy Trip.

Cheers.