Adventures and celebrations

We have been on a few adventures over the past month; we have also celebrated  Matt's birthday, the Feast of the Assumption and the return of preschool; and as normal, the boys are growing a changing daily.  

For Matt's Birthday we went on an off road adventure in the Shenandoah Valley.  It was a fun, beautiful trip.  I also made him a homemade Dark Chocolate, Salted Carmel Ice cream cake.  It was my first attempt at homemade ice cream (yum) and homemade carmel.  It turned out really well, in fact so well that it was gone before I could take a picture.

We aslo celebrated the Feast of the Assumption.  I have been trying to work some new faith traditions into our lives, so Orson and I made Mary cookies (blue m&m on sugar cookies), colored a page I found online and then went to Mass.  It was a fun day and Orson seemed to enjoy the small celebrations.

This past weekend we went apple picking and then on a hike at Harper Ferry National Park.  It was a beautiful day.  Orson liked the apples best, I liked standing where the Potomac and Shenandoah river met and Matt liked all the cool history stuff that was going on the commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle there.

Crooked Run Apple Farm

 Harper's Ferry

Orson getting instructions on how to be a foot soldier

The rivers

More dress ups

 Listening to music and exploring the town

 Catching the bus back to the car

Brother on the stroller

Orson started preschool last week.  He has grown so much, sometimes we look at pictures and think "that is how he will look as a teenager" He is so loving most of the time, has become a little whinny (we are working on that), says such silly things like "You're killing me mom," "Holy Buckets of Mole," contant singing and  talking about volcanos and robots, and being an all around silly boy.

Ferdinand has become an avid crawler (no more army crawling), loves to pull himself up to standing, screams all the time!  Eats more then Orson at dinner and loves to cuddle.