Fall Festival

Last Saturday, when it wasn't raining, we went to the Kinder Farm Park Fall Festival. Kinder Farm is a large park in Millersville with sports fields and barns for 4-Her's to keep their animals. We saw (and touched!) so many new animals, square dancers, tractors, pumpkins, scare crows, and even a huge machine that shot corn cobs 100 yards across a field! Jack and Daddy really enjoyed looking at the tractors, especially the John Deere ones!

Jack just saw his first cow and it moo'ed at him. He didn't stop giggling for 5 minutes!

Here we are checking out the pig....the snorting did the same thing for Jack that the moo-ing did! Ha ha ha!

We also got to see a REAL Hokie bird! This might be hard to explain at Thanksgiving time......

Here's Jack chatting up the lady Hokies.

We had a super fun day, seeing and hearing lots of new things, and enjoying the fall weather!

Friday with Daddy

Last Friday Daddy left work early and we all spent the afternoon together. We had a delicious lunch at Moe's and went to the sailboat show in downtown Annapolis. We got to see lots of very cool sailboats....some big and some small....and one on sale for over $2,000,000!!!! Jack and Daddy stopped at one of the docks to pose for a picture!

After the boat show we went back to the Academy and Jack attended his first soccer game - Navy Women's Soccer vs Army. What a game! The Mids won 2-0! Hurray! Two of Matt's mids are starters for the team, so we cheered very hard for them especially!

We had front row seats and Jack really enjoyed watching the girls run around...he is quite the ladies man and always keeps an eye out for the girls! It was a very fun day with Daddy!

Half Birthday

Well, tomorrow is Jack's half birthday! I can't believe he's already 6 months old! In one way it feels like yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital, and in another way it seems like I can't even remember back to when he wasn't part of our family. In the last few weeks he truly has changed. He is so much more interactive and talkative (ok, babble-ative), and when we go out he stares people down and squeals at them until they look at him so he can smile at them. He truly is the happiest kid I have ever seen and as much as I loved snuggling his tiny little newborn sleeping body, this stage is A LOT more fun! Matt and I are so excited for the holidays coming up, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the fact that Jack will be old enough to actually enjoy the festivities. We're off to a pumpkin patch and fall festival this weekend! Should be fun.

Well, as with many other "month-birthdays", today Jack celebrated with a doctors appointment, normal immunizations and a flu shot. Poor kid! Of course there were some tears, but nothing a bottle couldn't fix at the end! Jack topped the charts again this month! He is weighing in at 21lbs 2oz and measuring a whopping 29". He is 97th percentile for weight and 100th percentile for height (although Matt informed me that there is no such thing as 100th percentile...it's really 99.9999999 but I think you get the picture). And my arms are starting to look like Michelle Obama's!

Welcome to an old friend and a new one

What an exciting weekend! Our wonderful friends, the Jaskowiak's (Liz, Derek, baby Charles, and puppies Bella & Riley) came up for the weekend to stay with us and go to the Navy vs Air Force football game. Liz and Derek are our dear friends from our first duty station in Monterey and we've been lucky enough to be stationed with them a few more times too....and we always hope for more! Liz and Derek are also Jack's Godparents. We love having them up and it was such a fun weekend! Last time they were up (in July) Jack and Charles were still not too interactive - Charles is about 6 weeks older than Jack - but this time they absolutely loved playing and talking to each other. On Saturday we went to the football game and did some tailgating before and after the game. I think the boys enjoyed the game - despite being a little tired from a missed nap and some super loud noises!

As you can see, the boys really enjoyed playing with each other. We had every single toy out, all over the floor!

Charles is a little more advanced than Jack, and is able to Army crawl on his tummy....Jack's just chilling, eating the remote.

Very important discussion about the packaging that the new toy came in.

Today we welcomed a new friend into the group. Also stationed with us in Monterey was Matt's thesis partner, Trevor. He and his beautiful wife, Kelly, welcomed their new daughter, Hayden Grace Baumgartner, into the world a few weeks early on Friday! The eight of us were planning to have brunch this morning, but instead of brunch we got to have a get together in the hospital with NINE of us!!! We are so excited that Hayden is here - she is absolutely gorgeous, just like her Mommy, and SO tiny! She was born at 6lbs 6oz. The picture of her next to Jack is just too much!

Liz with Charles, Kelly with Hayden, and me with Jack.

Derek with Charles, Trevor with Hayden, and Matt with Jack.

Left....Left....a Left, Right, Left

On Friday we kicked off the weekend at the Naval Academy's pre-football game Friday night parade. It's always a great show and Jack especially likes the band and cannons! This weekend the Naval Academy class of 1959 was holding it's 50th class reunion and Jack and I had the pleasure of sitting next to a member of that class and his wife. We learned so much about what the Academy was like 50 years ago - what's the same and what's TOTALLY different! We got to see Daddy's company marching in the parade and clapped for them when they were announced! We even snapped a pic of 18th Company!!! Afterwards, we met up with Daddy and his friends for a little Happy Hour at the Alley - a bar on the Naval Academy campus.

a 3 hour tour....

That never sounds good, does it? Well, last weekend we decided to make a slightly different trip on the boat. We normally go towards the Eastern Shore or Annapolis, but on Sunday we travelled up to Baltimore. We saw lots of seagulls and lots and lots of big cargo ships. On the way into the harbor, we saw the buoy that marks the spot where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner - while being held as a prisoner aboard ship.

What cool history to have so close to home. The buoy is painted as an American Flag.

Well, this is the point where it gets good. As we got closer in to the harbor the weather started to change a bit and it got cloudy and very breezy, so we decided to head back home. As we were nearing the end of the channel and the mouth of the bay, we heard a banging and Matt said "I think we must have hit something because I can't turn right anymore". Well, you know that can't be good, right? As the banging got louder, we decided to check it out. Matt cut off the engine, opened up the compartment and realized a belt completely came off.....uh yeah, in the middle of the channel in the port of Baltimore.....Baltimore....like one of the busiest ports on the East Coast. So, while Matt was knee deep in the engine compartment and Jack was below deck, I was the look out to make sure nothing was going to hit us. After a few minutes of "interesting", we were able to get underway again and make it home. The ole Island Girl did a great job, and serendipitously the engine stopped the second we drifted into the slip. Despite the end, it was a great trip. We even got to sail next to the Pride of Baltimore, a beautiful, HUGE, sailboat that does tours in the area. I got a picture of the boat with the Baltimore skyline in the distance.