Tyler Says the Darndest Things

While out on the bike trail, Daddy pointed out some deer to Tyler that were jumping back into the woods. Tyler replied to Daddy by saying, "Daddy, those are not deer! They are kangaroos! Kangaroos are good jumpers!". LOL

Our Family Protrait by Tyler Smith

Boys will be boys.

All of a sudden it got quiet this afternoon. I looked for Tyler and found him all tucked in his bed for a nap. He's never gone for a nap on his own before. I guess waking up at 5:30am this morning, and then helping Daddy out in the yard, finally wore the little guy out. He didn't even stop to pick him his bed buddy, Winnie.

While out caching yesterday, we came upon this trail marker in which Tyler insisted that it was a giant crayon. LOL

After a long year, Tyler is finally reunited with his Beka. :)

GGGreat Stuff

This morning Tyler came running to me so excited. He said, "Mommy, Mommy I made a 'G'!!!". He was so proud that he made the letter G with his train set that I just had to post in on here.

Summer Fun

At play date, Tyler was quite the popular little boy. While I was pushing on the swing, a little girl came along and asked if she could push him. I agreed and before I knew it, two other little girls came along and wanted to have their turn to push Tyler in the swing. Tyler didn't mind at all. He loved it and it gave my arms a little break too. The highlight of our play date day was actually coming home and getting sprayed with the hose.

Story Time

Today we attended our first story time located at the library near our house. They started off the class by some singing and moving around and then the kids got to take their own carpet squares up to the front and enjoy some good books being read to them. While some of the younger ones had a difficult time staying still for that long, Tyler did not. He was great, listening intently to both books. After the books were read, the kids had another song where they used shaker eggs. Tyler had a blast with this part. Then it was craft time. The craft was to colour a photo of a chick. Tyler chose to colour his blue because Nanny's Blue bird. Before long the class was over. It was wonderful being involved in an interactive class again. Tyler really missed being with kids in this type of setting. We are definitely going to make this part of our schedule each week.

Tyler Says the Darndest Things

The other day we were out on the caching trails and Steve says to Tyler, "Maybe we'll see a deer in the woods!". Tyler's reply was "Maybe we'll ride on some!". LOL

Bikers

When Steve and I were in Italy, we puchased bikes. It was 5 years ago. Since then, we rode our bikes a total of two times! Mind you, there wasn't a lot of places to ride a bike in Sicily; the second time we rode them was on the side of Mt. Etna! However since that time, we kept saying that we needed to get back into biking and get our monies worth. Well, today we FINALLY got on our bikes and rode again. Yesterday after our trip to Alexandria, we stopped off at the sports store and purchased a child's seat for Tyler. Steve assembled it last night and this afternoon after some minor maintenance was done we enjoyed an awesome bike ride around the neighbourhood. We had planned on going biking on one of the beautiful bike trails here, but we were invited over to our friend's house for a cookout so our time was limited. Going around the neighbourhood did give us a great practice before hitting the real trails. Tyler, loved riding with Daddy, and Steve and I had so much fun riding around. We can't wait to get on our bikes again!!!

Old Town of Alexandria

What a great day we had today! Steve downloaded some caches and we headed up to Alexandria, Virginia. Our first stop was a nice park that had some bikes trails. Along the water was an interesting lighthouse. I took a photo because I've never seen this type before. I'm used to the ones back home that are much taller. This one literally is a "light house". After our trip to the park, we got back in the car and drove down the road a bit until we found some parking. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking along the streets admiring the great sights and doing some caches. One cache lead us to an old train tunnel that has been converted to a bike trail. Tyler, especially loved going through the tunnel. Close to the trail tunnel was another virtual cache. There was a tomb of an unknown soldier and to claim the find we had to correctly answer some questions regarding the site. Walking through the Old Town of Alexandria, reminded us so much of Europe. The buildings were very much the same as we remembered. There was a lot to see and we didn't get to do and see all that we wanted to, so we will definitely be making another trip to this fantastic place! Loved it!!!

Bubble Dancing

Tyler's Trip to the ER

For the past week, Tyler has had a terrible cough. It is especially bad at night and in the morning. Last night in particular, he was up most of the night coughing. This morning, Daddy took off of work and drove us to the emergency room to get his boy checked over. This was the first time we took Tyler to Andrew's Air Force base because we've never had to take him to the hospital here before. So when we told him we were going to Andrew's, he immediately thought we were talking about his buddy, Andrew, and told us that Andrew wasn't home and that he was at his cousins house. LOL When we first arrived at the ER, there wasn't as many people as we expected. The triage nurse looked over him and said he was very well behaved. Then it was back to the waiting room again. The wait this time seemed a little long and Tyler got bored. Finally, his name was called and the doctor did her check. The doctor said everything looked OK, but ended up sending us to the radiology department for Tyler to get x-rays just to be on the safe side. The nurse put Tyler in a wheelchair to get transported down to radiology and he thought that was the greatest thing. The x-rays went well and then we were sent back to the ER where the doctor confirmed he had a viral infection. It was a very long and tiring day for us all, so it was no surprise that on the way home Tyler was soon fast asleep. Here's hoping that he has a better sleep tonight and he recovers soon!

Mexican Night

Just as we were sitting down to dinner, Steve received an e-mail from a cacher friend of ours mentioning an event that night. We forgot to set up our e-mail notification when we came back to Maryland to let us know when event caches are published, so if it weren't for the e-mail, we would have missed out on a great evening spent with our caching friends. The event was hosted by our friends, Beau and Jo. We attended several of their events before and they are always very well done. The location was at a Mexican restaurant. We sat and talked to our caching friends, many we haven't seen since last year. Because I had already prepared dinner and we ate already, we didn't order any dinner. However I caught glimpse of the dessert menu and everything looked really appetizing, so I ended up ordering a delicious dish with bananas wrapped in a tortilla with cinnamon, honey, chocolate and whipped. It also came with fried ice cream. I am still drooling over the thought of having another. It was sooo good!!! A great way to top off a wonderful evening spent with our caching friends. The top photo was taken by our friend, Katherine. This vintage firetruck was across the street.

From Blah to Beautiful

OK disregard the last post, we decided to put everything back in the bathroom tonight. Steve still has to install the fan/light and the tub facet, but for the most part we are finished. Here is the before and after shots. The paint colour is called sea sparkle. How do you like our new bathroom?

As We Continue...

After a few days of taking a break from our bathroom renovation to let the drywall dry, we were back at it again today. Today was spent sanding the drywall, painting, and installing new fixtures. We hoped to finish the bathroom today, but unfortunately that will not happen. Tomorrow the new fan and light will be installed, along with a new spout for the tub put in. Then we'll be putting all our stuff back in the bathroom, along with a new shower curtain, mat, and accessories we purchased a couple days ago. We're getting quite excited to see what the finished product will look like!

Family Fun

Steve got to come home early on Friday, so we took advantage and decided to go caching. Since we've been away, there's been a ton of caches hidden in our area. Last October, our friends, Beau and Jo, hosted a Halloween event where there were several caches hidden in a beautiful horse park. The park is filled with beautiful grassy trails. We had a lot of fun hiking these trails and finding caches along the way. Many of the caches were hidden with a cool Halloween theme, which Tyler just loved. In fact, he was the one who found several of the 8 caches we found in the park. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. We did a lot of hiking and saw three rabbits and a groundhog.

Chloe's Crew

Our friend, Chloe, invited us over to her house today to see her ferrets. She has three, two female and one male. They were really neat and I actually got to pick one up. It took Tyler awhile to actually get brave enough to pet one, but once he did he really liked them. Chloe is definitely a lover of animals. Besides her ferrets, she owns two cats, two dogs, and some fish. We also got to meet the rest of her animal crew today, with the exception of one cat who took off because he was afraid od strangers. Sounds just like our cat, Luigi!

Hodgepodge

Here is today's mix of events. First of all, this morning we had to cancel our trip to play date because recently our car has become unreliable. Fortunately, we think there is an easy fix, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that we're right. So to make up for today's skipped fun at the playground, we made our own fun right here in our backyard. Tyler and I brought out our picnic blanket and had a snack. We then had some taking turns blowing bubbles and trying to catch them. While we were out enjoying our backyard, we noticed a bird's nest had fallen out of one of our huge pine trees. Thankfully there were no eggs still in or around the nest. Perhaps it was an old abandoned nest that was no longer in use. Our final event for the day was the arrival of Daddy's glasses in the mail. Steve lost his glasses just before boarding the plane in Iraq to come home and he's been having to wear a pair of prescription sunglasses to replace the ones he lost...even while driving at night! So to say the least, we were quite happy for Daddy to get his new glasses. They look really good on him too! So there you have it, a summary of what our day was like today.

Big Interview

Last week, Steve interviewed the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus for the show he produces, 'All Hands T.V.' . He interviewed the Secretary with a Marine. What a terrific opportunity this was for him! I am so very proud of him!!!

Our 4th

Our friends, Katherine and Rodney, invited us over to their house for a cookout, and what a cookout it was! Everything was sooo yummy!!! We had a wonderful time catching up with friends and meeting new friends, while Tyler played. We had delicious espresso and then we were all headed over to the base that Steve works on to see the fireworks in D.C. This was the first time we had viewed the fireworks from there and it was so much better than fighting the crowds in downtown D.C. and then having to go get on the Metro. It was more enjoyable! We are very thankful for Katherine and Rodney for making this our favourite Independence Day, so far!

Bathroom Makeover

As mention in yesterdays post, we have started a major renovation to our main bathroom. We completely took out everything in there, including the flooring. One part of the flooring was rotten, so it had to be replaced. We've hit a few snags along the way and we've had to make a lot of trips to the hardware store, but Steve is doing a bang up job! Tyler and I aren't much help, so Steve is doing most of the work, though I did get to help him with the painting last night. Below is a few pictures I took of what's been going on at our house during the past few days. The one with Steve and the Pepsi bottle is him actually putting a new Pepsi bottle in the wall beside the old glass one we found. Steve thought it would be cool if in 20 years when the new owners renovate the bathroom again that they will see the collection of Pepsi bottles from the past living in their wall. LOL

Buried Treasure

As of last night, we officially started our main bathroom renovation. This is the last project before putting our house on the market in preparation for our move in January to Virginia. Everything was completed gutted out of the room and in the process, we found some interesting items we never knew we were living with. One of which was a glass Pepsi bottle found in the wall behind the shower and tub. Also behind there we found feline feces that were about 5 years old! Gross!!! We also found a purple crayon and a pen behind our medicine cabinet, along with a little girls' photo. Anyone know this girl? She is probably a teenager now. Steve worked on the floor today and tonight we finished the painting. So far, we didn't hit too many snags, so please wish us luck for a smooth bathroom makeover.

Very Special Friends

Today my native land turns 142 years old. Happy Birthday Canada!!! Since we are not fortunate to be home to participate in the birthday celebrations, we wore our Canada attire. Tyler had a very special t-shirt to wear. It was made just for him! Before we left my mom's to travel back home, Tyler was given this special shirt. Over the year that we were living in Canada, we met some great friends through our friends, Charmaine and Kelly. Tyler went to Tiny Tots with them, as well as celebrating a few holidays. Tyler misses his Canadian buddies and mentions them all the time. It was so nice of Cameron, Emma, Ciaran, and Lindsay to give us this keepsake so that Tyler will always remember how generous and friendly Canadians are.