New Years Eve-ish

Sara prepared an awesome tapas dinner for New Years Eve. The kids ate while Doug drove to Whitetail from a week in McLean.

Tapas for dinner on New Year's Eve

After dinner, the gang played Beanboozled. You spin and pick a jelly bean. The flavor is either good or really bad. As you can see below, Julia is gulping water after eating a bad bean. The entire half of the room smelled like rotten eggs, stink buygs, etc. Apparently the bad ones were really bad. Doug was glad that he was on a no-sugar diet.

Beanboozled

After dinner we rang in the New Year a bit early (10pm) with a incredible fireworks display over the 7 ponds. Sara zoomed with friends past midnight. Doug passed out a 11pm.

Christmas 2020

We didn't get to travel, so we had a stay-near-home Christmas. Kids and Sara took a day off from skiing, we did zoom calls with Sara's family, and Grandad Johnson came down from Baltimore to watch us build our new Lego sets.

RJ open his Lego Freight Train Set

Julia was super excited about her gingerbread house Lego, her new doll, her katchup shirt. But the highlight was a 3-foot massive stuffed unicorn that was named "Uni."

Julia super excited about her huge unicorn

We delivered some cookies (that we could not eat: Sara - no gluten, no dairy; RJ - no nuts; Doug - no gluten, no sugar) to neighbors.

Julia and I posed in front of the "Christmas Night Fever" at the Gray's house.

Sara optimistically thought that we could have a nice family photo. After about 10-15 minutes, we ended up with what you see below. Julia is happy because she got to press the picture button.

Family poses for pre-online-church photo

Pre-Christmas at Grandad's

Since Aunt Debbie had to work, we had an early Christmas at Grandad's house in Baltimore. We played games, opened presents, stayed warm in front of the fire, and hung out with Walter.

Walter wears his UPS hat

Schlage comes through

 The lock from our garage to our house magically stopped shutting when you pushed the door closed. The only way to close the door was to manually turn the door knob while closing the door.

After taking the lock apart and doing some online research, Doug determined that the issue was a faulty tubular latch. 

I emailed the folks at Schlage and they sent me a new barrel latch within a week. Nice! Figured that type of service was a worth a blog post.

Replacing the tubular latch fixed the door closing problem!

Kids Christmas Break

During Christmas break, Sara took the kids to Whitetail for a ski-a-thon. The gang skied 11 days in some pretty good (a some pretty bad) conditions. For the first few days they hung out with Carter and Caleb as well as some of the other kids from the neighborhood.

Ski pack heads out

RJ was pretty excited about skiing over jumps formed at the edges of the runs. Jib-junction was a run that included some sanctioned jumps. 

After Christmas, Abby got to use her new ski equipment.

Manmade snow at Whitetail

The snow machines were active this week. With a high temp of 55 degrees, the workers were gone so we got to play.

RJ and Carter did a two-man bobsled run!

Julia and Caleb made snowballs and enjoyed sledding

Breaking the Rules

 Every once in a while a person must rebel. While in an office building with 2-3 other people, I felt the need to express myself.

In addition to walking the wrong way and entering through the wrong door ... I went down the up staircase.

Head Scratchers

I have two favorite Covid-19 office additions.

1. Foot grabber on bottom of the bathroom door. I like this one because they went through the expense of installing it so people didn't have to touch the door handle. However, unless you are a ninja, you cannot open the door by pulling with your foot ... because you have to push the handle down to unlatch the door.
2. On the 2 sets of double doors at the front entrance (picture 1 above), there are 2 doors assigned to walk in and 2 doors to walk out. I like this because right next to this entrance there is a double door (that everybody entering from the parking lot uses - which is everybody) without such restrictions.

Christmas Preparations 2020

Christmas prep got started a bit early this year. The kids were super excited about trains, two trees (sigh!), and lots of decorations.

RJ's favorite drum had been missing a drumstick for 6-7 years, but Sara stumbled upon it! With two drumsticks and a lanyard, the kids made enough noise to be a full marching band.

For the history of the drum, see: http://dougsara.blogspot.com/2012/12/merry-christmas.html.

Julia imitates RJ's 1 year old pose

Julia Plays Piano

 While RJ is playing hockey, Julia has been practicing piano. Steady progress is starting to show!

Julia plays Camptown Races

Golfing at Whitetail

With off-season rates in effect, the family decided to try 9-holes at the Whitetail golf course. This was Sara and Julia's first time on an actual course. 

On a gorgeous November day, we showed up late so we wouldn't get in the way of any real-golfers. From the very beginning it was clear we were NOT golf pros. After loading our clubs into our carts, we took off towards hole #1. Unfortunately we headed in the wrong direction and ended up closer to hole #3. Then using the map, Doug figured out we were at the end of hole #1, so we drove back to the beginning. 

After the first tee-off, the course marshal drove up to us and gave us some pointers on how to make things a little more enjoyable. He was very polite and nice as he suggested some ideas on how we could finish the course before midnight.

RJ putts while Julia tends the flag

After 3 hours of golfing, we managed to get in 7 holes. This included the following highlights:

• We found a nearly new pink Calloway golf ball for Julia
• RJ found a used glow in the dark ball
• Sara hit one or two in the air
• Doug played an excellent 8th hole as 'speed golf'

After all was said and done, RJ looked pretty good as a golfer and declared it was the best possible way we could have spent the day!

Update: November 21, 2020

RJ and Doug got another round of 9 holes plus 40 minutes on the practice green. RJ's main complaint was that we didn't play 18 holes. Thank goodness for winter rates. 

RJ chips onto the practice green after we played 9 holes

Halloween 2020

Halloween 2020 involved sweets, costumes, treats, trick-or-treating, candy, pumpkins, cookies, and more sweets. The neighborhood gathering was cancelled (bummer since Halloween was finally on a Saturday), but there was plenty of people giving out candy.

Preparation

Cookie decorating with Amelia

Pumpkin Carving

Julia draws and carves

Julia scoops out the seeds

RJ carves "Door Prize" which was appropriately rated as challenging

Halloween Night

House at night	Costumes
At the end of the night we ended up with a living room full of candy. I didn't take a picture, but a picture would not have done the situation justice anyway.

Last Produce Sale of 2020

 The garden was a success this year due to some awesome dirt from Grandad and the lack of an extended summer vacation trip away from home.

The team braved a cold wet day to sell butternut squash and bags of peppers. Towards the end of October we were still getting lots of butternut squash, lots of peppers, some tomatoes, mint, kale, and some tiny squash.

Refurbishing a Trail

The family spent an entire day climbing playing in the woods. Mr. Brad found an old abandoned bike trail which the gang decided to rejuvenate. The trail featured many turns, a jump, 3 bridges, and a stream crossing (almost). 

Here are a couple pictures from the stream crossing.

Kids add rocks to fix the broken bridge

Classic Construction Scene - 1 worker / 5 supervisors

Twelve Years of Marriage

 After twelve years, we are still having fun ... 

Whitetail house, skiing, and Covid-19

Or put another way ... after 15 minutes of picture taking ... a Julia tantrum ... and 30-40 pictures ... this was the best we could muster.

Selfie stick photo

Patient Julia

Julia won the Virtue of the Month for the month of September - which is a big deal at St. Agnes. The virtue of the month was PATIENCE. Humph, Doug feels like he should have won.

 

RJ was courageous in April 2019 when he started at St. Agnes.

RJ Plays Goalie

 RJ loves playing goalie. Doug does not like putting on goalie gear ... but I'm getting good at it.

Navy Blue rushes Out

  

Fall Hockey Begins

Fall hockey has started. The navy blue team ... well ... maybe they will get better as the year goes on. They lost a close game to red (25 - 1) and had a good outing against white (6 - 1).

RJ looks good in goal

RJ rushes out to take the face off

Bike Ride to Grocery Store

I talked the kids into going on a bike ride with no particular destination in mind. Five minutes into the ride Julia says, "I'm thirsty." As a result the destination was set to the McLean Giant to get some water.

The Ride

We were on a pike path along Georgetown Pike for most of the way and rode sidewalks for the rest. Julia overcame two obstacles.

1. Her non-gear bike made getting up/down hills an effort.
2. RJ's leadership set an erratic pace which involved a lot of random braking.

Here is the route as recorded by the GPS.

  

The lightening pace of 5.2 mph was a bit understated because my GPS remained on while walking around the grocery store. We could have easily been averaging 6.2 mph :-)

Dead Squirrel

In the middle of the bike trail there was a dead squirrel with "it's guts coming out." Julia missed it (not sure how) on the way out, so on the return trip we talked about it for about 40 minutes until Julia finally got to see it. Yes, she stopped and looked at it.

Accident

Near the McLean library, RJ veered off onto a basketball court. The court was wet. There was moss on the court. Luckily the fall was at low speed, so it did not interrupt the remaining part of the ride.

The Shopping

While at Giant we purchased Gatorade (because it was cheaper than water) some lunch meat. And most importantly we grabbed a bag of Tiger Chips (a.k.a. Cheetos). The kids wanted the Family Size bag, but being a health-conscious parent, I talked them into the standard size.

After getting home, we had lunch and ate the Cheetos. All of the Cheetos. In 15 minutes. Burp.

Stoner's Farm in Mercersburg, PA

Low Expectations

The gang went into this event with low expectations. How much fun could it possibly be to wander through a corn maze in the middle of a random farm in PA?

Throw in a couple of school friends ... add some rides, attractions, ice cream ... 4 hours later ... "wow, that was awesome, we have to go back."

Pictures ...

Corn maze - dead end 

Corn maze - end

RJ's Favorite was the Pedal Go-Carts

Julia and Sedona in the petting zoo 

Old fashion slide

Why wouldn't you climb this?!

Water pump game. "Ouch," says Summer

Family photo. Mostly normal.

Ski Lift in Summer

During the summer there is plenty to do on the mountain. Shoot slingshots, mountain bike, zip line, fishing, camp (almost), and hang out with friends. 

Hanging out with Carter and Caleb without having to arrange play dates made the kids more independent.

Julia hangs with Caleb - not sure where Santi was for this one!

Fisherman from Mars

Hello. I come from planet Mars. I am here to catch fish.

RJ had one pair of shoes which fell apart while kicking a soccer ball. The bike helmet is standard when you spend all day riding to pools, ponds, forts, and ski slope trails.

Strange Harvest

Today's garden harvest was quite good. There were many things you would expect, plus the first fruit from our golf-ball plant.

  

Sara purchased some foam golf balls so she could practice in our back yard and get good enough to play on a real golf-course (she has already mastered mini-golf). The ball flight is fairly realistic ... my balls all slice right.

We tried to chip balls to be closest to the cone. RJ had a couple good shots.

Pickup Pool

Hopefully none of them city-folk seen Sara bring this here idea to McLean.

Pickup truck or swimming pool?

Fishing on the Bay

 Went fishing with Granddad and the Grays. Plenty of fish action. Highlights include:

• Bradley's new rod caught its first fish ... a skate/ray. Mr. Geoff battled it for 20 minutes to reel it in, and thereby locked up fisherman of the day.
• Mr. Geoff also won the $1 challenge for catching the first spot fish.
• Julia quickly caught 3 fish, then decided to hang with Katelyn on the front of the boat.
• RJ caught a lot of perch, he was super excited from 7pm the night before through the drive home
• Katelyn, RJ, and Brandley jumped in the water ... despite the sea nettles (stinging jellyfish)
• A school of jumping fish and a flock of seagulls engulfed us
• The Woodwind II (Wedding Crashers Boat) passed 20 yards to our port side

Ms. Melissa proudly displays a fish.

Mr. Geoff fights the big one. RJ shows how big! Turns out it was a stupid skate.

Mr. Geoff unhooks a fish that Bradley caught.

The Woodwind II goes right past us

The girls hang out on the front of the boat. The front was a fishing-free and RJ-Bradley-free zone for much of the time.