Hiking the Forestry Trail

We decided it was time to get out of the house for a bit. We thought we would hike the 6-mile Ragged Mountain Reservoir - set way back on a gravel road on the south side of town - but were surprised to find the parking lot overflowing. We relocated to Fontaine, where part of the Rivanna Trail picks up.  This also had several people hiking it, but after a bit branched off to a Forestry Trail that we had to ourselves.  We only ended up going about a mile before we looped back to where we started, but it was still nice to get out in the woods. Plus our ending spot had a picnic table and our trail-mix themed banana bread was still warm:

We donned masks the few times we passed other families

Quarantine Date Night

We thought it would be nice to have a quiet, fancy dinner in the backyard. Several of the local upscale restaurants are offering date night menus for 2 on Fridays and Saturdays, and we decided to give The Mill Room (Boar's Head) a try, especially since their menu included their famous peanut soup and bread pudding. Benji really wanted to serve as our waiter and he roped Abby into helping as well. We tried to discourage him at first, but it actually worked out really well as he heated up each course and brought it out to us.  We even drove out to Jefferson Vineyard and picked up a bottle of wine for the occasion:

Global International Scavenger Hunt (GISH)

GISH is a worldwide phenomena that many people we know in the trivia world enjoy.  It is essentially a giant, week-long scavenger hunt in which teams compete to complete a long list of strange items (such as make a video singing a duet with a librarian or make a full size model of yourself out of a foodstuff). We've been sort of interested before, but it seems like a big commitment. Last weekend, however, GISH announced a one-day stay-at-home hunt which seemed to be just our speed. I had been starting to gather a team when we were invited by Claire Sattler (reigning teen jeopardy! champion) to join her team. Since you need 15 people and this was our first GISH, we happily agreed. We took on 6 items: knit a replica of a can't-lose household item; let a child cut your hair; have a child feed you with a 6+ foot implement; have the youngest person teach the oldest person a dance and make a side-by-side video of you doing them; create a camouflage hiding place from your child; and deliver a note of friendship by drone. Most of these were submitted by video, but here are a few pictures:

Home Haircuts

We invested in some clippers and both boys have had a home hair cut (a week apart):

BBQ Season

We've had, for the first time in years, a real spring in Virginia. It's been mild, 60s and 70s, most days. We've also started receiving produce boxes from Shenandoah Produce for the year. They are mennonite farmers and trade with other farmers in more sourthern regions, so we've been seeing summer produce like corn and tomatoes already. Which all prompted our first BBQ of the season:

Family Read-Along

One of our bucket list items this month was to start a read-a-loud of a classic. We've been reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (sometimes):

Neighborhood Chalk Walk

Our neighborhood has been trying to come up with activities to interact and provide some fun. Last month, we had a "chalk walk," where families were asked to create fun pictures and messages for joggers and walkers passing by. Here was our attempt:

We decided to try to mosaic taping approach, which was a lot of work! We ran out of tape, so we were lifting and reusing as we went.

The finished product

As captured by the camera on Benji's drone the next day

A few days later, they announced categories for a competition among the chalk art. One of the categories was most 3D, so Abby and I tried our hands at some 3D chalk art: