Another Hummingbird

 It's been a pretty quiet week, but the hummingbirds continue to grace us with their presence. This one was humming around the butterfly bush for a good 15 minutes:

Firebolt 5K 2020

 Last year, we ran this race in Staunton on the same day as the Queen City Magic and Mischief Festival. It is a fundraiser for CASA of the Piedmont and it is a pretty race through the Frontier Culture Museum. They also found a way to encourage multiple year participation, by making the medal in 4 parts which can be magnetically connected to each other. Last year's Gryffindor medal is hanging on our key rack waiting for its friends. This year's race was virtual, but we registered and received our t-shirts and Ravenclaw medals in the mail ahead of race day. It was fun to get out together and run a 5k, even without all the excitement of a real race day. And I made fun little golden snitch snacks for us to have at the end. Kevin and Abby stuck with their Ravenclaw shirts this year, but I switched to Griffyndor and Benji hopped from Hufflepuff to Ravenclaw:

Hobbit Day

 We celebrated by adding a few meals to our day (second breakfast, picked up from Kindness Cafe, afternoon tea of cake (in the shape of a ring!) and milk, and both supper and dinner (in the form of a mcdonald's run after the kids' flu shots). We also read out some quotes from the books, watched our favorite scenes from the movies, walked barefoot outside and learned to dance like a hobbit (the jig from the party scene):

Evening viewing

Bare feet and afternoon tea

Rosh Hashanah Family Program

 CBI had an outdoor, socially distant family program over the weekend to allow congregants to get outdoors and celebrate. It was a nice outing -- it took us about 45 minutes and we got to tromp around Camp Holiday Trails and visit different (no contact) stations to symbolically connect with each other and nature:

The first station was this bridge where we were asked to think of personal barriers and how we would confront them this year and then symbolically cross over. The kids both chose to run over. :)

We had a map to help us keep track of the stations

At the second station, we were each supposed to think of a specific compliment for each other person. I also took the opportunity to take little portraits of the kids under the tree

After the third station (a tree house, where we were to meditate on nature), we took this trail to the other side of the lake. We were asked to collect pretty bits of nature off the ground as we went

The second to last station was Tashlich, where you case your sins into the water. We've traditionally used bread crumbs for this, but the camp asked us to use pebbles instead, because the bread is actually not good for the animals

We also spotted this bug that I have never seen before - it's a red velvet ant

At the last station we made a nature mural with our goodies, but we also decided to take a picture with our matching Kindness shirts (seemed like a good theme for Rosh Hashanah)

More Tie Tying Lessons

 Benji was 90% of the way there from his diagram, but he needed a little assist from daddy at the end:

I love that he insisted on wearign a tie, even though Rosh Hashanah services were over Zoom

Rosh Hashanah Dinner 2020

 The weather was beautiful, so we had dinner outside with Gammy:

Abby braided this beautiful challah from dough I had left to rise (I was at a work meeting)

Another new challah recipe - we liked this dough less and I used the "cheat" way to make round challah with balls instead of braiding

Abby and I lit the shabbat candles

Gammy's socially distant table (it was only 6 feet away, so we could easily talk)

Frisbee Golf

 We set up our own course in the front yard, which turned out to be pretty fun:

Drive-Through Safari

This had been on our list of pandemic-safe potential activities for a while. Abby had most of her Saturday afternoon blocked off for the FTC kick-off, and we figured it might be a good day for the rest of us to get out of the house to quiet a quiet space and more bandwidth for her. It's been a few years and we did not know if Benji would still enjoy the safari, but if anything it was our best visit ever (last time we visited, Benji was still a little shy about feeding the animals). There was lot of giggling and it was a few hours well spent:

There was a baby giraffe romping in this field, you can just see her behind the first post from the left

From a distance, Kevin thought there was a bird sitting on this guy's face

Baby llamas. At various points, we saw them nursing from their mama llamas

This is how we  lost our first feed bucket. This guy knew what he was doing, too. He grabbed right on to the bucket and pulled it out of Benji's hands. Afterwards, we noticed he had a mound of others at his feet.

Benji wanted to stop feeding the llamas and save our second bucket for the later animals, but that did not stop them from peeking in our van windows hoping for a snack.

Benji really liked these small antlered deer. He spent the most time and feed on them

We were stuck at this spot for a while when the animal surrounded us

This guy was very curious and kept poking his head in the windows while we waited

More little deer (Benji had a real soft spot for them)

This guy didn't come to the car, but we were stopped near him for a while and got to hear him let off an awesome bellow

Benji was hesitant to feed ostriches at first (he remembered losing a bucket to their vigorous pecking on an earlier visit), but we encouraged him to try and then he was laughing up a storm

This guy looked massive, but was very gentle

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He used the last of the food on the deer, of course