SkyPark Adventures!

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  • Skylar Birthday – Lexington

    We were on our 3rd trip of the summer for Skylar’s birthday. Our stay at the Yogi Bear campground was awesome minus the scrapes from the first day where Tweedle Dee (aka Skylar) decided to jump off a moving golf cart and subsequently crashed face down – minor scrapes only. Tweedle-Dum then decided he was smarter and could pull it off and he subsequently did the exact same thing but got some nasty road rash on his buttocks.

    Yes, I wrote “buttocks”.

    Nana and Poppa D hosted Skylar’s birthday and we played a round of corn hole. It was a beautiful and fun evening had by all.

    We prepared Skylar (and Daddy’s) favorite cake which is angel food with chocolate whipped cream topping – NeNe’s recipe (my grandmother and Nana’s mom).

    We also spent a night at the Col Alto Hampton Inn. The kids enjoyed the fancy amenities and played a round of chess while drinking their hot coco a la sassy.

  • Harris beach trip

    We went to the Outer Banks with the extended Harris family – 24 people if I recall correctly. Most of the time was spent doing 1 of 3 things: playing in the ocean, chilling in the hot tub, or eating yummy seafood.

    We only had one semi-bad weather day and it was 75, a little windy, with water temps of 68-69. Parker was the only kid who stayed in the ocean pretty much all day – like all the other days. I think he’s got some Polar bear in him.

    On Thursday we went to Jockey’s ridge for a hang gliding lesson. That was super cool! On the way home from the beach we stopped at a water park. They had all kinds of fun stuff including slides, a dueling obstacle course, flow rider, and a climbing wall.

    After last summer we now have a tradition of stopping for waffles for lunch in Richmond on the way home. Last year we went to Capital Waffle and this year we went to the Granby Waffle Shop.

  • White Oak Falls

    We met old with my best friend from Highschool, Mike Heard, and his 3 kids to hike White Oak Falls and explore what I had heard was “Natures water slide”. The water was not what I would call warm! Flowing water never is.

    We went down the water slide, then hiked down and then back up to see the falls. We found a way to jump off the rocks and into the water – which was super fun and only slightly dangerous. A butterfly also landed on my shoe – apparently they can’t smell.

    We had just watched a Key and Peele episode on “Terries” and Parker was calling everyone Jonathan Livingston the whole day. Funny funny!

  • Poppa D’s 90th Birthday

    It is hard to believe that Poppa D turned 90 this year. It’s even harder to believe after watching the videos and pictures! He’s in great shape and here’s to celebrating again next year!

    Parker was very excited to make Poppa D a paper craft for his birthday.

  • Indoor climbing

    Our first week of summer break was the only one without out of town travel, but nonetheless action packed. One of our Lax friends invited us to go indoor rock climbing with them at their gym. What better evening activity for 2 monkeys!

    I’ve also included a climbing day from Sport Rock in these pics.

  • Harris Engineering Camp

    The first week of summer was the only week that we didn’t travel somewhere out of town. Instead we had Daddy engineering camp with our friend Abby. The challenge was to create a water craft that could be rowed about 100 yards from a boat put in at Algonkian Park down to a floating dock.

    I had saved cardboard from the warehouse and bought 6 rolls of duct tape. I had no idea how much duct tape one could use in making a cardboard boat. I think I ended up buying around $75 of duct tape.

    We learned about water displacement – in order for the boat to float it must be able to carry as much weight as the boat itself and it’s passengers. A quick eyeball test was to figure out how many gallon jugs would fit inside the boat. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, if we could fit more gallon jugs inside the boat then weight of the passengers, then we knew it would float.

    Both boats had plenty of water displacement, but Skylar and Abby’s boat suffered a critical failure when Abby put too much weight on one foot to adjust herself, thereby poking a hole in the side of the raft where the sidewall met the floor. It wasn’t long until they were under water 🙁

    Nevertheless, we had a ton of fun and maybe we learned a little something as well. Parker’s boat on the other hand made it all the way to the dock, and then the rowed it all the way back to the boat launch. Nice job Parky!

  • Skylar – gymnastics banquet

    Skylar’s end of the season gymnastics banquet was held at Great Country farm. It’s the interesting place with lots of fun stuff to play on like obstacle courses, inflatable bounce jump thingy’s, a maze, spinning human rat wheel, giant checkers and chess boards.

    Skylar received an award for her competition scores and she played with her friends and Parker. We actually ended up staying there until after the park had closed because we were having so much fun and there was one other large family near us, so we didn’t notice the time and that everyone else had left as well as all the employees.

    More fun for us!

  • Back yard slip and slide

    The back yard at Glencroft is mostly steep hill and one day I was inspired to carve out a slip and slide path with a berm that would keep you from impaling your self against the fence. Whee!

  • Memorial Day weekend – Yurt camping

    We went Yurt camping with the Wilkendfelds’ for Memorial Day weekend. The first night we tried and tried to get a fire going to cook dinner and we finally had it when the wind whipped up and it started downpouring rain. We gave up, rallied the kids, and went out for pizza at Vito’s – right across from Uncle Gillette’s boat mooring.

    The rest of the weekend the weather was picture perfect. Saturday we got up and had an awesome breakfast including home fries that Abby and Skylar cooked and home made donuts with cinnamon and sugar.

    Gillette met up with us at the Lake Anna beach and took everyone out for a fun afternoon on the boat. No injuries 🙂 Later that night we had a successful dinner (2 dinners worth of food) of kabobs and london broil with Uncle’s G’s marinade. We played spoons until around 10:30 and got some well-deserved sleep.

    Sunday we packed up and then went for a hike around the lake. On our way out we stopped at the snack shop and it felt like we were back in 1960. I don’t think the prices had ever been updated. Probably not the healthiest food, but I had an entire lunch for $3.00.

  • Early dismissal hike

    When school lets out early, we go outside to play.