Lydia is sure growing!!
Here she is in her birthday dress from Gma Harrison, lying on the grass after church.

Brownie Beach

One other thing Lauril asked me to put on the blog is about our adventure to Brownie Beach. We were told that we could go there to find fossilized shark's teeth. We thought it would be a bust but we hadn't been to Chesapeak bay yet and I really wanted to go. It's in Maryland and about 1.5 hours from our house. We regretted that we didn't budget enough time to have a nice fresh seafood meal as the roads are lined with these little shops that sell seafood and plenty of "the freshest seafood around".

We got there on a day that wasn't extremely warm or blue sky but once we saw what we were looking for we found a few teeth and had a lot of fun. There are folks that sell these things on the internet for $30 to $100 but they are quite a bit larger than the ones we found. Our biggest one is about 3cm but the ones you can buy on the internet are up to 5".

I'm sure we'll go again when the weather is nice and we can wade into the water. Lydia waded anyway which caused some hassle but was a great day

Update!!

Its been three weeks since we closed on our house and got our stuff moved in. Today we celbrated Lydia's 2nd birthday and she seemed to enjoy herself. In the three weeks we've been in our house there has been a really wild time. We had a Nor'Easter' which provided 48 hours of heavy rain followed by 48 hours of winds up to 50mph. We lost one tree at the ground level and we also had a pretty big branch from another break. We still have to clean up that mess but it won't be difficult. As you also know this last week were the terrible events at Virginia Tech. Blacksburg Virginia is about 250 miles from where we are but a large percentage the college is from our part of the state. The event affects all people everywhere but there seem to be a lot of closer connections with people in this area.

A couple of evenings ago I was looking out the window from our sunroom and saw a cardinal (you know, a bird) and just one moment later a wild rabbit. Its still wierd to get used to having forests throughout the city and the wildlife that goes with it. Of course Austin chased the rabbit away with kindness (here, take this carrot) and i haven't seen it again. We seem to have nice neighbors. The boy next door is Willy's age but we haven't gotten the boys together yet to play. He's in Lacross so he's a busy boy. His dad is also interested in getting the boys together. It could be pretty nice for Willy to have a buddy on the same street. He hasn't had a boy his age to play with in the neighborhood for a long time, maybe ever.

Jessica went with the band to festival yesterday where her band took second place in the division. Every year here they combine festival with a trip to a pretty neat place. Last year they went to Hershey PA and this year they went to Paramounts King's Dominion theme park. Jessica hasn't stopped raving about what a great time she had and how nice the kids and adults in her group were.

We've been very pleased at our kids' ability to adapt to this new place. Its the adults that are having a harder time trying to meet people and make friends. We forget that it does take some time.

We Did it!!

We finally closed on our house and moved some of our stuff in! The closing went very smoothly and we were having a Pizza Party in our new sunroom by 7:00 pm. Lauril has been looking at different color combinations that she likes and the interior colors of the house are not really to our taste. Saturday morning (almost all day) we spent painting the family room. We'd found a great deal at a furniture store for some sitting furniture so we laid our cash down and that furniture was delivered on Saturday afternoon.

Our other furniture and stuff will be delivered tomorrow morning. The hard work will be worthwhile...