Charlottesville Fall Saturday

We had another quiet weekend in Charlottesville and took advantage of the beautiful fall weather to get out and enjoy the day. We started at Riverview Park, where Benji rode his bike while Kevin ran behind and the girls took their own run on the path along the river:

We spotted a heron on the river bank

After the run, we decided to grab lunch on the Corner and picnic on the lawn while the foliage is still beautiful:

After lunch, we walked over to the Fralin (UVA's art museum) to take in the "Unexpected O'Keefe" exhibit of paintings Georgia O'Keefe did while in residence at UVA. These are some of her earliest pieces, done while she was still figuring out and refining her style, and they look quite different from her later work:

We particularly liked her painting of the law school

To end the day, the kids ordered in pizza while the adults went out for an evening of dinner and an escape room with Matt and Molly:

44 minutes, which was 5 over the room record, but still a really good time

Walker iSTEM Night

The theme was Escape from Shenandoah, and Benji had a fun time:

Ready to go

Your Name as a Fraction station

Halloween 2018

We traditionally have some sort of fun Halloween breakfast. Pinterest to the rescue for these candy corn decorated bagels with cream cheese:

As it started to get dark, we lit the pumpkins and the boys headed down to Andy and Jodi's for group trick-or-treating, while Abby and Mom stayed home to give out candy (and play a million games of the Google Ghoul Duel):

Benji's pumpkin

Kevin's pumpkin

Ruth and Abby's pumpkins

a little extra on the sides of the Ghostbusters pumpkin

Group shot of the kids before trick-or-treating

 Once the boys returned, Abby was eager to help Benji sort his candy:

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving 2018

We usually do these the night before Halloween so that they don't rot before the big  night:

Hard at work

Finished products

Halloween limbo

Part of the October pack meeting for cub scouts:

Camping Trip

Benji has been begging to go camping every since he missed the cub scout fall camping trip. We agreed to go out to a local campsite this weekend, which was a lot of work but overall a good experience:

Benji was super excited to help me make firestarters

We lucked out and got a beautiful camp site right by the creek:

This was haunted camp weekend, so the first thing we were able to do was to go to the Misty Mountain pumpkin patch and pick out a few pumpkins (this was lucky, since the local patch we usually frequent was completely rotted after so much rain):

Once we got settled, our friends the Dukes and Shadels joined us for a campfire dinner and trunk or treat around the campsite:

Benji and Dylan

Family themed costume. Abby had a Wheel of Fortune board, but at the last minute decided that she did not want to wear it.

After everyone left, we settled in to read around the campfire for a little while and then hit the sack in our tent, which was surprisingly comfortable:

Halloween Craft Night

Since the school quarter ended Friday, we had an unexpectedly quiet Thursday night and decided to do some crafting. We began with waxing leaves. I accidentally included a black crayon with the melted wax, so the leaves came out black, but we decided they looked cool as spooky leaves:

We moved on to making a Halloween cookie house:

The final product was not a work of art, but we did have fun.