August 25, 2011

August 25, 2011, originally uploaded by Schmidt-Family.

I'm thinking of doing a picture and post a day to show what in the world we are doing. We'll start today and see how we do.

Christina was blessed with Schmidt Teeth like all the other kids. Nothing that some metal can't fix. She had the metal installed today!

Adria in Town - - and other bits of fun.

About three weeks ago the whole group of us ran up to Frederick, Maryland to look at antiques and try out a donut shoppe called the Fracture Prune. I know, this sounds like a crazy name for a donut shoppe, but these are pretty good donuts.

First, you pick your flavors and then they make them while you wait. Some of them are just crazy....like SAND, which is really just Cinnamon and Sugar....go over to here to check out all of their crazy mix and matches.

This is what the inside of out box looked like:

So you may be asking what else have we been up to. Well, Megan had church Youth Conference and Cheri and Drew were asked to help out. So we flew Adria out to watch the rest of the kids and to spend some time with her.

This fun included a little trip to the National Marine Museum in Quantico.

It's a very well done museum with great history and information.

A few days prior to that we decided to go tubing down the Shenandoah River. It would have been a bit more fun if the water was higher and faster.....but it was still a good trip where Drew and the girls had fund, a good work out (from swimming or walking in the slow parts) and a good bit of sun.

Fireflies or Lightning Bugs

Okay - first of all these little guys don't really exist west of the Rocky Mountains. They are suppose to be in certain places, but not like they are on the east coast. Fireflies or Lightning Bugs are actually little tiny beetles. This is a picture of a tiny one. They grow about 2 to 3 times larger then this guy. But not much bigger.

From what we have read online they can take up to 2 years to mature. Then, in a short 21 days worth of adult hood they flash to attract each other. Luckily for us we have a nice little trail that leads into some woods near a marshy pond area. The sort of area they just love.

This is about a 30 second picture - - the sky looks like day time since the light pollution from the city sort of spoiled the skyline. Do you see the little green dots and a few green lines? Each of those is a firefly.

This is another picture. This was taken leaving the camera open for about 30 seconds. This was taken fairly early in the season and they didn't move or flash much. Just sort of blinked on and off. They are really amazing. And now as we get into June they are blinking and moving like crazy now. You will see thousands in the trees, flying in front of you and all over. They are just sort of cool.

And of course we captured a few - brought them inside in a mason jar and took a few pictures. 

Strawberry Festival

Okay - we haven't been very good about posting here.....but it's not because we haven't been doing anything. So let's start with this past Saturday. We woke up early and took off for the:

Of course - - they had Strawberries....yet at $40.00 a flat - the price seemed rather steep. Especially since there is a U-Pick place just down the road.

This was a typical craft fair place with food, crafts, sellers....and monkeys!

The Monkey is wearing the bandanna and that's Drew in the shirt. In case you couldn't figure it out.

And Megan and a bunch of her friends went to Prom.....

And Megan had a choir thing - - and Jessica had a choir thing.

And......we're building a new house. Yet right now it's just a dirt field.

Busy!

So we've been rather busy lately and haven't had time to blog much. But we decided we better get something up here and share some news.

Girls are doing well in school and are having fun. Megan is working hard babysitting and at her job as well. Not to mention school and early morning seminary.

Jessica is in Irish Dance and is preparing for a big performance.

Christina just celebrated her 10th Birthday!

Cheri.....? To explain what she's been up to - - let us do a shameless plug and announcement at the same time.

So if you didn't know, Cheri has been writing books for a number of years. She actually has two different series all worked out. Each series contains at least 3 books. The first series has two finished books. One is now published on Amazon. The 2nd is soon to follow. These two will most likely be followed by the 1st book of the 2nd series, since it's already finished and ready to go.

This first book is called Fateful. You can click on that title and go straight to the Amazon page. Currently it is only available on the Kindle yet we will soon be offering it for iPad, Nook and eventually printed copies as well.

If you don't have a Kindle there are plenty of Kindle solutions for your phone, PC, Mac, Ipod. Just about whatever electronic device you have!

Working from Home

One of the biggest changes for us with this move is that Drew works from home quite a bit now. He supports field engineers at different locations all around the area....but he doesn't have a dedicated office at any customer site or company location. So, the basement corner is where he spends portions of each day.

This is quite often the view that greets him when he comes upstairs.

They can hear him down there.....and they want to spend time with him...but dark barking is not conducive to conference calls.

A Wordle.

Have you ever played with creating a Wordle? Go to http://www.wordle.net/ and click create. Then feed it a bunch of words or paste a URL of your blog or whatever. It creates a nice picture of the words that are contained in what you post and sizes the words based on frequency.

As an example, below is a link for one for our blog.


And here is an example of Moroni 10 from the Book of Mormon.

CODE RED!!!

So twice now since living here in Virginia we have experience what we like to call Code Red Days. When the weather gets bad the schools close and if it's really bad, or what they think is really bad, a Code Red is called for all the teachers. Meaning they don't have to come to school.

Our First Code Red

The first time this happened was after about 2 inches of snow fell during the day while the kids were in school. School was let out an hour early that day and then simply didn't open the next day. CODE RED! CODE RED! We can't help but snicker after shouting that.... Now, keep in mind the roads were clear that next day when the schools were closed. And by 11:00, there was no snow to see. Even then the sky was blue and clear. Drew ended up taking a half day off and we all went shopping.

CODE RED #2

Today was another CODE RED day. It started to snow last night....then some rain...then everything froze over night. Today could actually be considered a bad day. There was a thick layer of ice on everything. Our black driveway was white with ice. The back roads were still covered in ice and it was thick and frozen enough that the cars didn't break it up. Yet the main roads are just wet.

The kids love CODE RED days since they get a day off from school....and the weather is usually fine compared to Utah standards. Sure enough - by about noon is was all melted and everything was fine. So? Time for another trip.

Megan took off with some friends but the rest of us went out to lunch then to Skyline Caverns.

Not the cheapest caverns around but from the reviews we have read you need to see this one before you go see the larger caverns in Luray.

This thing looks like an eagle...can you see it?

And these crystals, called Anthodites, only exist in two other places in the world, but where discovered at this cave.

So in our house - CODE RED usually means let's go out and have some fun! It's not like the roads will be bad...ha ha ha.

Printers Chest Refinished

Drew's company normally takes the week off between Christmas and New Years. He needed to burn a few extra hours and ended up taking a few extra days prior to Christmas.

One of his projects was to refinish and old printers chest that his parents owned. He stripped it all down. Sanded out the rough spots then stained and finished it again. In the process he found a few odd things. First, while most of it appears to be made out of oak the bottom piece in the front appears to be poplar. Drew was tempted to remove it and replace it with a piece of Oak but decided against it. The back of this never looked very nice. Yet a coat of stain and lacquer did wonders and made it look really nice.

Sanding almost done and ready to be stained again. You can seethe bottom piece and how the grain doesn't come close to matching. Yet to preserve it the way he had it, Drew left this as is.

Only the top drawer has the separate spots for type. The remainder are simply big empty drawers.

Finished project. With dog posing in picture. We might just add a few legs to this. Nothing permanent mind you. What we are thinking is making a small tray with feet and simply rest the chest on top. Just to give it a bit more height.

This is a Hamilton Printer's Chest. Original hardware on the handles.

Ben's Chili and Norman Rockwell

So for the Christmas break our little Christina has been a bit sick. Yet the other day we decided to test out her stamina and run to DC for a quick trip. We started off a little late so we ended up eating lunch first. Over thanksgiving we saw something on the Food Network about Ben's Chili and decided to try it out. We actually missed the real Ben's Chili experience and ended up next door at Ben's Next Door. Same food, yet you get to sit down and relax...which is what Christina needed.

And their chili cheese fries were pretty good as well.

After lunch we jumped back on the metro and ran over to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the Norman Rockwell exhibit which goes away January 2, 2011.

The museum is a large square building with a center courtyard. A few years ago they built a covering for the courtyard. This is actually where we spent about 30 minutes waiting in line just to get into the exhibit.

We couldn't take pictures inside of the artwork.....but here a few we gathered from the internet so you can see what we saw.

Afterwards we jumped back on the metro and headed home. Christina didn't make it very far before she was out cold.

The on the way home we stopped at one of our favorite yogurt places called Pinkberry. It's a nice replacement for our Utah yogurt stop SpoonMe that we miss.