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:

Maine Vacation

Our summer trip to Maine was a last-minute surprise. We got a call Friday night -- just a day before we were to go on our planned trip throughout eastern Virginia -- from friends who invited us up to share a house with them on the water in Sorrento, Maine. It's a small village just across from Bar Harbor on Frenchman Bay.

It was a long trip, and we thought we could make it in a day, but we had to pull into Kennebunk, Maine to stay overnight. We got a late start and had made it as far as Kennebunk by about midnight, and we still had hours to go before we got to Sorrento. Luckily, we found a motel and piled into it for some much needed sleep. We got up early and took a walk on the surprisingly wide sand beach.

After a short walk on the beach, we took a lap around town in the van. We picked up some coffee and great muffins and a cinnamon roll from a small store, drove past President Bush's compound, and headed on to Sorrento. The house we stayed in was right across a small road from Frenchman Bay; it was a huge place with a big wraparound porch. This is the view from the porch, with Myles perched on the railing:

The stillness and quiet up here was astonishing. Not a sound at night. Very relaxing and peaceful. We sailed, went for walks, ate great lobster, cooked some wonderful meals, visited Bar Harbor, enjoyed the scenery and watched the boys play along the rocks on the bay. Some more pictures:

Mom, William and Myles aboard the sailboat

Max the sailor

Boats in the harbor off Sorrento

Max climbing the rocks, pretending to be Spiderman

William and Max on the rocks

More boys climbing

Looking up the bay to the right of the house as the sun starts to go down