Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Happy Solstice-ukah!

And the holiday collabs continue. This year the 8th (and final) night of Chanukah very conveniently fell on the (winter) solstice. So we got to combine 2 different fire rituals in one super fun (and luckily not super cold) night. We're still working out the details of our solstice celebration, but we've got the key element of beautifully decorated log containing each person's "leave behind in this year/bring into the next one" written and folded and tucked in notes that we then burn in our fire pit... and also that somehow solstice bonfire is the perfect time to burn up excess yard waste as well. Not so sure that's a formal celebration element more just a happy coincidence? Top 2 pics are the majority of our celebrants and aforementioned log, and bottom ones are the various fires. Darkest day is now behind us, nowhere to go but light!

Saturday, December 20, 2025

Chanukah for Realsies

Well, it was for real the other nights, too. This night we got all 4 of us under one roof... with candles!

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Monday, December 15, 2025

Chanukah Visits!

Somehow this year Chanukah overlapped with Charlie's drive through from school to their parents in DC, AND Paige's week long post-first semester of Junior year but also pre-trip to England visit. We made entirely gluten-free, Celiac friendly latkes and enjoyed introducing Paige to Chanukah fesitvities.

Thursday, November 27, 2025

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Baby's First Indoor Carbon Leaf Show

Actually, I so lie. AJ's first indoor CL show was actually last December, the holiday shindig at the National in RVA. I guess this is Baby's first CL Show at the Jeff?

Sunday, October 26, 2025

Welcome to U16

AJ's team won their bracket at the Blue Ridge Cup!
It's a good thing there are other parents who take good soccer pics, because I simply cannot. Thanks to Jen and Crystal and I believe Heather W for the awesome snaps. Much appreciated!

Friday, October 24, 2025

Return of the Mystery Maze

Z was going to go climbing in the Red (aka Red River Gorge) with their Obie buddy, but that plan fell through which was kinda sad for Z as they love to climb, but was also nice for the rest of us because we got a surprise bonus week of Zara time!

We took the opportunity of said bonus Z time to do some fun Fall things, and that includes going to the corn maze. When the kiddos were younger we'd often do the "big" maze at Liberty Mills, usually at night/by flashlight, but we've since moved on to a new challenge. These days the group seems to prefer the "mystery maze" which is basically 8 acres of mapless madness, designed to challenge the most inherently direction centered peeps. In a previous incarnation we had 5 for the maze, and this time it was just 3 of us so one of our primary strategies (leave one person behind while everyone else fans out and checks for dead ends vs the way through) was less effective since we either had only 2 checking paths or 3 of us would go but the water bottle we left to mark out place wasn't very responsive to our cries of "Marco." It took us 2:20 to finish the maze (about 30 min longer than our last attempt, though also that was different maze?) and we "lost the plot" at least twice. There was a bit of (educated?) guessing involved, but I generaly stand by our maze conquering skills.

Saturday, October 11, 2025