Family Zoom Fun

Benji being silly on a Paquette family zoom. He really wanted to host a game of Family Feud and insisted on doing it all out:

Rhododendrons

It's been a pretty spring:

Cinco de Mayo 2020

More reasons to celebrate mid-week.  We had nachos for lunch and enchiladas for dinner, plus frozen strawberry margaritas, which the kids loved. And Mexican music, of course:

Star Wars Day 2020

May the 4th Be with you. We've never had the time in early May to celebrate before, but it seemed like a good excuse to do something fun:

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: