Birds of a Feather

I'm a couple days behind in getting my post on here....I'll just attribute that to the house of sickness we had this last weekend. Maddie started it on the eve of our "Opening Ceremonies" get-together [after having acquired the "bug" from a text...***], then passed it on to Lester for Sunday, then Corben enjoyed an evening of it that night as well. I figured I was next, but thankfully I'm still on the good side of it [now that I've said that.....hmmmmm]. All I can say about the weekend is that I'm so very thankful for our recent purchase of a portable Bissell carpet cleaner. That thing rocks! :D

Anyways, this post is definitely for the BIRDS! Since we moved here to this home, we've had so many birds coming to our yard. Our old house, as great as it was had only one tree on the whole property. I couldn't get a bird in our yard to save my life, well except for the bluebirds. I even had two different feeders, but no birds, in fact the mice enjoyed the food before the birds did. Boooo!

So, on to the birds here - well it's like night and day -- there are birds everywhere, and I love it. I have 4 different feeders [with more planned] and have identified more than 25 different birds thanks to my bird watchers book I got on Christmas Eve :D [and hence one of the many reasons Patton the cat continues to be an indoor cat!] Here are some of my favorites:




























Bird identification:
Row 1 - White Throated Sparrow [White striped], Northern Cardinal,
Row 2 - Red Bellied Woodpecker [female], Yellow Rumped Warbler
Row 3 - Mockingbird, White Breasted Nuthatch

I'm trying to take pictures of all the varieties of birds we see in our yard, and as spring comes we will have the birds that come home from migration. Look forward to more "for the birds" posts! :D

***We had some friends text us prior to our "get together" and say they had a sick child, but that one of them could come with the other child that wasn't sick -- but if that would be taking too great a chance in exposing us, that they would just stay home. We agreed that was the best idea - since none of us had been sick "yet." So much for that......Maddie was throwing up within three hours of that text. See? It was the text! LOL

"Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes..."

I'm thinking it's extremely appropriate that I've placed the snowman background on my blog, since living here in VA has brought more snow in any one season than the whole time we lived in NC. I am loving it! Well, let me rephrase that just a little -- I love the snow, and one or two snow days is fine, [getting in all the snowmen, snowballs, snowcream, and sledding in] - but more than that causes a little bit of stir craziness at home if you catch my drift ;]

Here are some fun pics of the snow from last weekend and this weekend:

Last Saturday and the "big snow" - totaled about 8 inches that we got here.

Sledding at a friend's house during the storm
Church was canceled last Sunday since all the roads looked about like this, so we went on a winter wonderland walk.

Our house in the snow

Monday, a teacher workday = no school, so sledding we went. And when all the stores are sold out of sleds, break out the summer inflatables...they work even better than sleds! :DTuesday = snow day #1, friends over and snowmen.
Wednesday = snow day #2 [really #3, since no school on Monday] but it's shopping day, so no snow play...
Thursday = 2 hour delay for school (really? ... really?)
Friday = YAY, back to school, but there's another storm coming in...
This is the snow that came yesterday....so lovely! It snowed just about all day - from around 10am until 8pm.... The roads weren't too bad today, it's been very sunny and bright, so we instead of church being cancelled, it was just at 11 and Sacrament meeting only.

I sure love this beautiful weather, and maybe that's because we don't have it from October until March....I don't know if I'd love it as much if it were that frequent but I'll take whatever I can get. Sheesh...I wish I had my skis here ;]

The Weather Outside Is.....

"OH" you thought I'd get that one weather song stuck in your head right? Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't....but due to the fact that it's been raining off and on all week, the weather has been 'on my mind,' but not in a frightful way. ;] I realized that one of the posts I wanted to do last year and never did, was with the changing seasons. We have seen the gorgeous fall colors, "almost" hurricane-like rain/flooding, and snow. It's been pretty fun. Enjoy the pics!

First the fall[ing leaves that are soooo much fun to rake and bag]....

[at Mount Vernon, VA]Maddie disappearing into one of the many
leaf piles....

Then all the rains....

The water level is usually 25-30 from where they are standing... This one is for Andy, this was our "beach" last August...
you there was no sand even visible.

This too is for Andy, College Creek - where you were catching the tides...

Then came the snows...two different times...

New Years 2009 Style

For the New Year's holiday [last] year we had some friends from the college days come down and stay with us. The Falls have three boys, so with our two we were up to five kids [four of them boys.] Now here's the fun part...their boys, Hayden, Jackson and Landon all brought their new Nerf guns with them and since Corben had received more dart ammo in his stocking, darts were flying everywhere, [and I'm still finding them in crazy places.] We all had a blast, and wish they could have stayed a little longer - but since they don't live too far away, we'll be able to get together again in the future.

For New Year's Eve day, we wandered down to Colonial Williamsburg soaking in all the holiday/festive fun there. We enjoyed some [really hot] cider and hot chocolate/treats from a bakery there and tried to stay warm, since the temps were in the 40's and cloudy.

We had planned to go back up to CW to enjoy the First Night activities there, but decided we'd had enough cold for one day and just chilled at home and had some good laughs. By the time 12am rolled around, only the two oldest were still awake with the adults and we counted down to 2010. Not surprisingly, we didn't even open the sparkling cider - but had it with breakfast instead and we were all in bed by 12:30am. It was a Happy New Year!

This lasted all of 20 minutes maybe, the pull of the Nerf guns was too strong! ;]

All the kids in Colonial WilliamsburgThe Girls!The Boys and all the kids!

Thanks for coming to visit John and Rachelle, we had a blast and can't wait to have fun times again soon. :D

Starting Fresh

So yes, my blog has been quite neglected as of the recent months. One of my 2010 resolutions is to post something new AT LEAST once a week. Now that I have this in writing, I need to remember that everyone that might read this blog will be watching for new posts and I can be held accountable :D Oh, and I am still within the first week of the new year, since this last week was the "first" week of 2010.

That said, I have a many fun events to catch up on and I will do that [but not all in one post]. I guess the most logical place to start is with the most recent - Christmas and New Year's.

We started out Christmas with some fun traditions-making a gingerbread house [and we never did make the candy train to go with it], driving around to look at Christmas lights and giving out our hand made awards to houses we felt were spectacular [thanks Jill for the idea], and attending the Colonial Williamsburg Christmas Eve tree lighting and Christmas Cannon. We were pretty busy the week before Christmas....Our gingy house...with gumdrop buttons

Our house with lights but we didn't win an award.

The Fife and Drum corp on Christmas EveCarol sing-a-long and tree lightingChristmas Eve jammiesChristmas morningNow that's a full stocking....Very excited about the strollerAnd the aftermath, if you look carefully you might see two little hands sticking out....
:D