The Blackwood Family Blog

Here are a few more Fall Pics, taken by Turbo.

You can see the difference as more Trees change colors.

This is the dogwood in our front yard.

Marigolds and Nasturtiums in Grandma’s Garden.

This is why you don’t give an 8 year old the camera.

Fall has arrived.  The trees are in full, uh, fall… The colors are changing, it’s definitely cooling off now. Getting downright nipply at night.

Here are a few pics of the changes as seen from our front porch.

We’ll post more as the colors get more pronounced.

Smidge has been gone for a few months, and her absence has left a gap in the family. We picked up Bo earlier this week from the League for Animal Protection (a local rescue). The boys went and saw him twice at the shelter and fell in love with him. With a mug like this, how could you not?

We decided to not tell the boys when we were getting him, and surprise them. We had him waiting on the front porch when the got home from school.

Even though he’s house trained, we are still working on getting our timing down with his potty needs. He’s only 10 months old, so a couple accidents in a new place are to be expected. So far, he’s been a great dog though. I haven’t heard him bark yet. He growls at the cats, until Munchkin starts chasing him through the house, then he yelps a pees a little. It’s funny enough that I can’t complain about the wipe up.

I’m putting in an underground dog fence this weekend so he’ll be able to play in the yard off of the leash. He’s just itching to run around and play fetch outside. Hopefully, we’ll get everything done this weekend and be ready to burn off some of that puppy energy.

Those of you who know Turbo, know that pale doesn’t cover it. I’ve advised her that she still needs sunblock even under heavy cloud cover. Some people just have to learn for themselves.

I guess the good news is that she’ll finally have tan lines that you can actually see. Untill she peels that is. 🙂

The upside is that she got a ton of work done in the garden.

We finally made it out to DC to play Tourist. Donna, Brandon, and Melody came out from scorched and burned Norther California and made the trip with us.

We went through several of the Smithsonian Museums including; the Air & Space Museum, Natural History Museum, and the Jim Henson exhibit at the Ripley. There were only 25 more or so that we missed, but it was just a day trip.

We took the obligitory Tourist Pics.

This is as close as we got to the Whitehouse. Pennsylvania Ave is now closed to vehicle traffic, and we’d had enough walking for one day.

One day trips to DC (3 1/2 hours each way) are somewhat exhausting. We must have walked over 10 miles easily. It was fun, but won’t be a frequent trip. Finding parking alone is enough to discourage anyone from going.

We finally found home. After months of searching, we found a place that we both liked and could afford. It’s not huge, but has potential. It’s in a good area. Just outside a large housing development, but we don’t have any ‘close’ neighbors to annoy us, or, more than likely, be annoyed by us. We are 1.5 miles from a Super Wal-Mart (not sure if that’s a good thing or not), and a Lowe’s, and there’s a new Kroger going in about 1/2 mile away.

It’s 2 bedroom, 1 bath, and only 1200 square feet. But, it has a 1200 square foot unfinished basement, and a 680 square foot unfinished attic. We’ll definitely finish the attic, and possibly a part of the basement. I like the basement unfinished because it makes a great workshop. If we finish everything, it’ll be over 3000 square feet. I can live with that.

It’s just over a full acre in size. That’s good and bad. Good because it gives us plenty of room to do things, like plant a large garden, have a 70 yard archery range, have room for a small pool for the kids, and more. The downside is, it takes me an hour and a half to mow it. On a riding lawn mower. That doesn’t include trimming the places that the riding mower can’t get to. That’s about $4 in gas just to mow the lawn. It’s worth getting used to though.

We are next to a large housing development, but have open fields on 3 sides of us. The only neighbor we have we haven’t actually seen yet. A couple shots of the view from our front porch:

We also have a small one car garage that has an attached workshop that will eventually be Teresa’s glass studio. Next to it is another building that has the well head, pressure vessel, and holds garden storage stuff.

It has a small dog run area with a dog house. Given my past history, I’m sure I’ll be spending plenty a night there.

There are a couple play areas for the boys too:

Last weekend I tilled a spot for Teresa’s garden. We put up a fence around it today to keep the numerous rabbit’s in the nearby fields out of it. Haven’t seen any deer in the area yet, but I’m sure they are lurking. There are at least 3 apple trees, 2 cherry trees, a possible plum tree or two, and wild strawberries all over the place. We also have a couple very large Mulberry trees that are dropping Mulberries all over the place. And yes, Mulberry juice stains.

Overall, we love the place. It’s a bit of work getting the yard into shape, but feels good to be able to get something done that’s ‘yours’.

Here you can see a good satellite overhead of the property before we owned it. The black car in the lower left corner pretty much marks the back corner of the property line. Our property line runs about 15 feet from our only neighbor’s house. Across the Gravel road, and below us are both large empty fields. It’s nice being close to everything you need, but not having people live close enough that you can’t dance naked in the rain. 😉

You can see the house in the upper right corner, then the ‘well house’, then the garage below that. We plan on trimming back the trees quite a bit as they are either overgrown or dead. Should keep me busy for a day or two… 🙂

I’ve already planned about $10,000 in changes, and Teresa is ahead of me by at least $30,000, so I’d better get back to work.

We have a large field on both sides of the house. Cows wander back and forth feeding daily. This is normal.

My wife spent a substantial amount of time today with my sons watching two cows try to, uh, ‘mate’. I’m not sure what to make of this.

We had a bit of an ice storm here last night. They called for freezing rain, sleet, etc. I figured, Ok, a little ice on the ground, no biggie. Nope. Biggie.

This is the first thing I saw:

Just like I figured, a little ice. Then I looked up…

    

It’s very pretty to look at, but just looks like a little snow on them. Not quite:

    

So it’s a bit more than a little snow on the leaves. We have several large broken branches that came crashing down.

Some other views:

    

It got up to about 40 degrees just before the boys got home from school. It was nice and clear, only a few clouds in the sky, and raining under the trees. Yes, under the trees. The ice is melting so fast that it’s literally raining underneath every tree, but clear everywhere else. Every so often a bunch of ice would come crashing down and shatter on the ground. When the boys got off the school bus, we had to have them run down the driveway to a clear spot. It was just weird that it’s ‘raining’ only under the trees. And not little drops. It was coming down hard. There’s a lot of ice to melt out of the trees. It’s going to take a while to fully de-ice.

Despite all the ice this morning, they only started school 2 hours late. I figured they’d cancel it completely. They just give it time for the roads to clear, apparently 2 hours is enough, and go on as normal. If there was ice on the trees in California, they’d declare a state of emergency and the governator would come out. Pansies.

Yesterday they said we might get a dusting of snow. Today we wake up to 2″ on the ground. It’s 4″ by lunch. The boys have been out a couple times having fun sledding down the driveway in the front yard. This is their first real ‘Snow Day’ since we’ve been here. They had today and tomorrow off of school anyways, so this couldn’t have come at a better time.

      

    

    

    

We finally got our fishing licenses and all the gear we need, so we took the boys out to Rutrough Point at Explorer Park. The first time we went, we only had weighted lines, and no hooks or lures, so I just taught the boys to cast. They had fun with that, but wanted to catch fish. We picked up a new pole for Daddy, got some lures and tackle boxes, and went back the next day. No fish in Virginia will ever be safe again. Unless they stay in the water.