November 2016

Without a doubt, this month's highlight was going out to WY for Thanksgiving.  Owen was in heaven having even more people to give him loves.  His favorite part of the WY trip was the Parade of Lights in Rod's Bank of Star Valley float truck waving at everybody.  He is very particular with where people should "siit" and loves "hot dogs", "cheese", "noodles",  his "backpack" and "berries". He is slowly making progress talking and is doing much better repeating something that we say.  Ileene got him some magnet alphabet letters and he can go through about half of them repeating the sound and then likes to show us "R" and "K" whenever he can.  His favorite movie is still Aladdin where he will sing along with all of the music which is ridiculously adorable.  He also loves Wall-E.  He also does very well at day care and his teachers are incredibly supportive with helping to teach him not to hit when he is frustrated.  His hitting is our biggest struggle at present. I found my old play doll a few weeks ago in my parent's attic and I brought it home for Owen to have some early training in being nice to a baby.  Fingers crossed it will help. All in all, a very happy boy.

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Visit 2016

Here are the house pics from our visit over Thanksgiving.  Damon was able to put in the remaining railroad ties before it snowed when the ground thawed a bit to finish up the side garden.  We will get more trees for the ends when we are out again in the summer.  We also decided to finally paint the dang French doors ourselves, so the interior is finally officially finished.  We will have to paint the exterior when we are out over the summer.

Brunswick, Maryland

Brunswick is a railroad town in Northern Maryland.  It is along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal as well so I was able to get some fun National Park stamps as well.  In 1890 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad moved its 'classification yard' here from Martinsburg used for switching cars to different lines. Measuring at seven miles long, the Brunswick yard was the longest yard owned by a single company. The railroad museum was very interesting and Owen was most fascinated by the toy train set and Thomas the Train cars.

Shenandoah NP, Virginia

The northern entrance to the Shenandoah National Park is only an hour and a half from our townhouse.  We were able to get to the park to see the fall colors, but this year wasn't all that impressive for the fall colors because the temperatures were so warm in the fall. The most exciting part of this day trip was that I was able to get seven new National Park Passport Cancellation stamps.  We even got Owen is own book. Shenandoah was formed as a National Park in 1935 and covers just shy of 200,000 acres. The highest peak is Hawksbill Mountain at 4,051 feet. The park lies along the Blue Ridge Mountains  in the larger Appalachian mountain range. Some of the rocks exposed in the park date to over one billion years in age, making them among the oldest in Virginia. Skyline Drive is the main road through the park that is a very beautiful ride to see the beautiful valleys and vistas.  During the Civil War this area was a hot area because it was key for farming and supply lines.  Stonewall Jackson had several campaigns in this area that were quite the blow to the Union troops.