Rub a dub, dub!

Just couldn't resist posting this photo:

First Snow of 2007

Sunday, Jan. 21

It's snowing!!!

Global warming?!? Ha! The boys hung at the back door watching the snow come down expecting a massive snowstorm, no school ... for days! Sledding for hours, building snow men and snow forts! The minute the snow blanketed the ground, they were out the door playing.

The gang gathered on the deck and just had some fun watching the snow fall.

Holy snowflakes, Batman!

OK, so it wasn't much of a snow -- only an inch or two -- but the boys had lots of fun (and it was enough to get school canceled on Monday)!

Route 11 Potato Chips

Saturday, Jan. 20

We decided to take a trip out to Middletown, Va., to visit Route 11 Potato Chips. It's a small, independed producer of chips in Virginia, and we wanted to see how they do it.

It was a great drive, out I-66 to I-81 then north just a mile or so to the small town of Middletown. Route 11 runs directly through the heart of the town. It's in the Shenandoah Valley, just at the foot of the Massanutten Mountains. Lots of quaint shops line the road on either side, and the Route 11 Chips building is tucked back off the road a little. It can be kind of easy to miss when you're first out there.

It's a small place inside, a real mom & pop operation. We watched them make potatoes into chips -- a pretty simple exercise. They've got a variety of great tasting chips and the boys had fun watching them being made.

We didn't stay too long, we grabbed a few bags of chips to bring home and headed back out to have some lunch at a nearby Italian spot.

Max insisted we take a picture of the "dinosaur footprint" he found in the parking lot: