Some Favorite Spots

We have now reached the point where we are starting to experience some of our "lasts" in Charlottesville -- Mark's last day of class and last final at Darden, our last day attending church in the Rivanna Ward, etc. While Mark was not at all sad to take his last final, we were all sad about saying goodbye to the great people in our ward whom we love so much. And in an effort to chronicle our time in Charlottesville for posterity (in what little time we have left), I'm trying to take and post some pictures of some of our favorite/most visited spots.

Home sweet home! While just a rental, this house has truly seemed like home to us. We've loved sitting on the front porch swing in the late afternoon and twilight, the girls have loved riding their bikes back and forth on the verandahs in the front and back, we love the trees (except during an intense storm when they knock the power lines down), we love the deer that tiptoe through the woods or sometimes feed 7 or 8 at a time on the front lawn. It often feels like a bit of heaven (outside, that is, since it is often a disaster inside).

One of the reasons we initially loved the house was the built-in play set and the trampoline that the landlord had here for his grandchildren.


The Charlottesville area is so picturesque! We took this picture at the Darden Days BBQ with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background. It was all I could do to hold onto squirmy, wormy Jane for the picture!
I know it's blurry, but I just love this picture of Millie in motion. She loves it here and is constantly collecting things/exploring in the woods (although you can't really see it, she is holding a golden, sequined purse in her hand into which she was collecting wildflowers).


Mark has been enjoying the golf course a lot lately now that his school schedule has lightened up a bit. His tan makes me look like the White Witch from the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

The Monticello Trail is one of my favorite places. I just wish I had gotten a picture a few weeks ago when the blossoms were in full force. The trail winds up the mountain and ends at the parking lot for Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. In the Fall, Abby, Jane and I would walk it about three times a week. Now that the weather has gotten better, we've started doing it again. Last weekend, we had a fun picnic there with our friends the Evans and the Capells.
The McLaughlin and Evans girls on the trail.

Jane a little wary of Josh Capell's advances. He's such a cutie! We're so glad the Capells came down from D.C. to visit!

House Hunting Update . . .

It seems that we have found ourselves a house and it is actually a pretty amazing story.

We arrived for our house-hunting trip and spent two days pounding the pavement with our realtor. We saw many, many homes, but nothing really clicked. At the end of the second day, we ended up making an offer on a home in an area we really liked, but one which would require some significant updates. There were a lot of positives about it, but we had a few reservations. The home owners counter-offered and we were ambivalent about raising our offer. Therefore, before making a decision, we decided to drive through the areas we most liked before it was time to meet up with our realtor.

It was a sunny Saturday morning and few people were out and about, but as we drove down one street, we noticed a man out on his lawn talking with some yard workers. Mark recognized him as one of the two people he knew in the area because he was one of the people Mark interviewed with during his interviews at the bank. It just so happened that he was also a stake president in the area. We stopped to talk with him and he graciously offered to drive us around the area to get us a little more acquainted with it. We then met up with our realtor and went through another day of fruitless searching.

That night, as we were talking through options, we received a call from this stake president. He mentioned that he had been offered a job with the bank in another office and that he was fairly certain that he and his wife would be moving. He said that if we were interested, we would be welcome to take a look at their house to see if it would be something that we might be interested in. He mentioned that they really wanted to bless someone's life and would be selling it for a reasonable price. We went through it the next day and thought that it would be a great situation for our family for now. Anyway, bottom line is, we now have a house and will be moving at the end of June! We feel very blessed and grateful that it has worked out the way it has -- that we just happened to bump into one of the two people Mark knows in the area, that he just happened to be the only person on the street out in his yard as we were driving by, that he would just happen to be selling his house . . . We just can't quite believe it!

Book Quotes

I am currently reading Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale -- the jury is still out on whether or not I really like the book as I'm not very far into it -- and I came across several passages about books/reading that really resonated with me so I thought I'd share them:

"I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels."

"I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything."

Odds and Ends

I took this picture from our front porch this morning! So beautiful!

We've had a fun week. Last week was the girls' Spring Break, but since it was not Daddy's Spring Break we didn't really have too much planned. We had some fun playdates, the girls and I visited the Children's Museum of Richmond, and later on in the week went up to D.C. for a few days to visit Grammie and Grandpa Ward. We loved the time with them! We saw the tail end of the cherry blossoms and went to the National Zoo. The girls especially loved Grammie's abundant supply of chocolate chip cookies and Grandpa's "Hillary and Hank" stories. I vividly remember him telling them to me and Jennifer when we were little. We loved to hear about the brother and sister who lived in a treehouse in the forest and had all sorts of adventures with the animals. The girls really eat them up, too.

The girls are so full of life these days! They say such funny things which I always tell myself to remember, but then end up forgetting. Jane is so, so, so busy (it seems I have sounded this refrain before)! We returned from our house-hunting trip to find that she had learned to climb. My first realization of this came when I walked into the kitchen and she was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. She is gradually saying more words, but is a little careless -- okay, very careless -- with her articulation so we still have to ferret out what she means. Three things that keep her most occupied -- being outside (royal tantrums if she can't go out and again, when she has to come in), plunking away at the piano (she'll sit on the piano bench for a half an hour at a time, turning the pages of the book, and "playing" and then she'll perch at the end and yell "Mama!" until I come and lift her down), and "reading" books. She loves to sit and look at the pages and has just started jabbering as she "reads". She refuses to sit in a high chair any more and desperately wants to be one of the big kids. I'm amazed at her daring on the trampoline. She is growing so big!

It's been so much more fun around the house now that Daddy is home so much more. We are reaping the rewards of his front-loading his second year at Darden and are glad that he has only one class a day. He is also glad that this allows him a little more time on the golf course :).

As for our house-hunting trip, it was a pretty stressful trip, but we had quite a remarkable experience. We found a house that we think will work well for us nicely, but things are still in the works so I'll post more about it and some pictures when it is finalized. Hopefully it will all come together this week! It is amazing to think that we could actually own our own house :). We wouldn't trade the experiences we've had for anything, though, and are grateful for how things are working out.

Happy Easter!

What a joyous Easter we've had today! It was a bright, sunny, perfect day. Grammie and Grandpa Ward came down from Norththern Viriginia on Saturday and we had such a wonderful time together (can't even think about moving so far away!). The girls loved getting dressed up in their Easter dresses and even seemed to understand the true meaning of the holiday. This is not to say that they were not also thrilled about the Easter bunny coming, but it was nice to see them catching on a bit. Mark gave a nice little family devotional this morning and then when we went to look outside at the signs of rebirth in the yard. It was nice to see that the girls seemed to get the parallels on some level.

Before church, Millie wanted to take Abby through the woods up the hill behind our house to say "Happy Easter" to our neighbors. Millie has taken pains to cultivate a friendship with them (the first time she went up there, she apparently walked right into their house -- needless to say we had to have a little talk) and will go up and help them with their gardening, chattering away the whole time. They are a retired preacher and his wife and wonderful people. Millie and Abby showed them their Easter dresses and then they talked about going to church. Our neighbors mentioned that they have drums at their church -- a detail which quite intrigued Millie -- and as I sat in our sacrament meeting singing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today", I realized that nothing can replace the fullness and feeling of the Spirit in sacrament meeting. I'm so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the knowledge that we have.


The Easter bunny was apparently a little too generous this year (perhaps the poor bunny was a little hungry when she did her shopping?) as the girls couldn't fit all of their Easter eggs in their pails, but they had fun combing the lawn and woods for their treats. Then, as we were getting dinner ready, we made the mistake of giving Jane a few jelly beans to keep her quiet. After that, she refused to eat anything but candy for the rest of the evening (which we of course could not allow, although she did manage to get her grubby little hands some of Abby's malted milk eggs before we noticed) so we put her to bed with a full cup of milk and are hoping that it will tide her over until morning.



Earlier this week we had a wonderful time at the Darden Easter party visiting the Easter bunny (Jane would have nothing to do with him) and having an egg hunt.

Spring Has Sprung!

Yes, I am a slacker. I have let my blog writing lapse shamelessly and I am determined to do better. Thanks to a few faithful readers for encouraging me to get back on track :).

It's been a busy month and we're looking forward to the next few months which promise to be even busier. It's exciting and a little nerve-wracking to think of Mark's wrapping up school, and our move to Texas (I'm endeavoring to maintain a positive outlook on this new locale while I continue to fall even more in love with this part of Virginia on a daily basis). So many big changes -- but exciting ones. Mark and I are heading down for a house-hunting trip this weekend and the cost of living, I have to say, is the bright spot of the whole move for me -- the salve to the wound (to be a little dramatic). We hope we can make a good, smart decision and find something we really like.

Meanwhile, Spring is coming on strong here and it is brilliant! It's been so nice to be outside enjoying the cool, sunny days. And there's something so hopeful about a world full of blossoms. The other day, on my way to take Abby to school, we drove down a street full of blossoming trees and saw some daffodils. Having memorized William Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils" for a 6th grade poetry unit, I started to recite it, but since 6th grade was such a very long time ago, I got stuck and trailed off. I thought that I was pretty much saying it to myself until Abby piped up from the backseat and asked, "What happens next?" Anyway, I posted it as this month's quote on the sidebar, because I've always loved it. I love the Spring!

The girls and I had a great time this past Friday visiting a farm managed by a dear friend from our ward. The 30-minute drive through the rolling, spring-green, cow-dotted hills of western Viriginia was breathtaking. Upon arriving at the farm, Brother Ehlers loaded some bales of hay in the back of his pick-up and took us into the pasture to see the baby calves. I don't think I had ever been in an open pasture amongst the cows before and we all loved it. Jane was especially excited when a mooing cow came jogging toward us (she was terrified of all of the other animals, though -- as in screaming-and-plunging-herself-into-her-mother's-arms terrified). The girls then got to pet/feed the horses and miniature horses, and run around in the wind and sun. It was magical.

Millie Turns 6!

Cute Cowgirl!

Abby looking for lost loot in the haystack

Blowing out the candles on her cowgirl boot cake

Millie showing off her skills at the Rattlesnake Toss

It's hard to believe that Millie is already 6!! She is such a grown-up girl these days and has such a big, generous heart. I remember -- and you'll have to forgive me for this little trip down memory lane -- the overwhelming feeling of love she brought into the delivery room when she was born! It was powerful and overwhelming. She was such a cheerful, fun baby and now she exudes joy and light on a daily basis in our home. We love our Millie!

And she is so willing to be pleased (when in the mood, of course). On her actual birthday, a Sunday, we had a special breakfast and dinner and opened a few presents and as she was going to bed, she said, "This was the best birthday ever!" Did we really need to do the whole party the following weekend?

"The best birthday ever!"

We did have such a fun time getting ready for her party, though (mind you, this is the girl who has been eager to begin planning since October), and an even better time at the party itself! Millie chose a cowgirl theme and we rounded up a posse of her nearest and dearest friends to head on over to "Millie's Ranch". We did a cowgirl necklace craft, played Pin the Hat on the Cowgirl, Rattlesnake Run, and Keep the Cows in the Pasture. The highlights, however, were the treasure hunt for the outlaws' buried gold, and a hay hunt. We had a rip roarin' good time and were so glad that Grammie and Grandpa Ward and Uncle Dave could come down for it, too!