Monday, December 21, 2009

Our Annual Trip to DC & the Big Blizzard of 09

This past weekend we took our annual trip up to Washington, we left Thursday afternoon and arrived in DC late, we had planned on staying through Sat evening and driving back home late Sat, however the best laid plans are almost always at the mercy of the weather, we knew that DC was expecting snow but we had no idea just how much until late Friday, we debated driving back that night but decided to wait it out!! We were able to get a trip in to the Zoo where we all but froze, it was a chilly but sunny day. Needless to say we took in most of the indoor exhibits.


For dinner Friday night we took David, Jenny and Ryan to "Fogo de Chao" a Brazilian style restaurant, it was wonderful, this was a late celebration for David's birthday.



We also managed to get over to the Temple, enjoy the lights and the programs, we watched Ryan, (great fun) at the visitors center while Jenny and David did a session.
























Sat morning we woke up to snow, lots of it, it was beautiful and coming down heavy, so we decided we better get on the road ASAP! The roads were almost deserted and it was almost a complete whiteout by the time we reached Fredericksburg, we left DC at around 10:30am and arrived home 6:30 pm you can do the math, from DC to Fredericksburg we didn't get over 35mph and we were lucky in places to be able to do that.






















I think that this is the most snow my car has ever seen!!










Saturday, November 14, 2009

OBX Storm Damage

Today Charlie and I rode down to the Outer Banks to check on the beach house, it was fine, thankfully! Others were less fortuate then us, most lost their steps going over the dunes to the beach the first is a picture of just that. In places it looked like the dunes had been cut in half, we rode down at low tide and in places we had to drive through waves. The road behind the dunes, this is the main road for the residents of Carova and for the fire station while we were there they were running drainage pipes and pumps to the beach to drain off the water.

This shot is south of our house and the posts you see sticking up are the remains of sand fencing which prior to the storm had been completely covered with dunes. It was weird some areas of the coast were untouched and other sections were totaly devastated. Looking at the picture below there appears to be a lot of beach but this is not so if you consider that prior to the storm this was mostly dunes. with 50 some feet to the ocean

The house is the first house after ours and was just sold for a ridiculous sum of money so the new owner had never used it, now it will be condemed because the septic system was washed out as was the house next to it, about 20 years ago these two houses were behind the dunes.



Below 2 washed out septic tanks.



Exposed sand fencing minus the dunes







View from our driveway looking North






The only damage we had was some trash washed up our driveway and in less then 30 mins we had it cleared, we feel very blessed.








Saturday, October 31, 2009

Trunk or Treat







I think that this is the 3rd year for doing Trunk or Treat at our place, its really alot of fun especially as we no longer have little ones to dress up and get ready for Halloween.








We have soups and of course Trunk or Treat and a haunted hayride through the woods and spooky movies in the barn



Ryan didnt quite know what to make of all the weird costumes, he was a fireman, his Dad, David was fire and Jenny was the firemans mascot...a dalmation!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Indiana Weekend

Weekend in Indiana with Sarah, Ed and Kids, has been fun and fast, we have picked pumpkins, played at the park made caramel apples, Sarah did a 3-D/4-D ultra sound for leah and while we were there we played around taking prego pics
Fun, fun, fun!



















Sunshine dogs and kids


Getting behind again on my updates, these pics were taken on the 19th after days and days of rain, it was so nice to see the sunshine and have warmer temps back again
a brief respite before the winter comes for good!


















Monday, October 12, 2009

Brighton

Our Last day or at least part of it was spent at Brighton, the rest of the day we spent driving to be closer to the airport for our departure the next day, I love the seaside in England, there's nothing quite like it.





and what trip would be complete with out a bowl of cockles and mussels. When I was a kid and my Mum you used to get these I would think, gross! Now I love them...I guess its in the blood!














Friday, October 9, 2009

Foxton Locks

On Monday Sept 21, we spent the day on a Narrow boat. This is something I have always wanted to do, although it was planned for this trip, I was glad that we were able to go..it was a wonderful relaxing day on the water, very peaceful. For lunch we docked the boat and walked through some cow pastures to a village pub for lunch and then walked back to the boat and resumed our trip. For more info on the locks visit the following link.
http://www.foxtonlocks.com/sections/visit/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat
This is something I would like to do again maybe for longer, a week would be good! Or maybe a whole month!