Graduation

Meade Senior High School

Class of 2010

Well, our baby girl graduated from high school. She was able to wear cords for having a GPA of 3.5 or above, and cords for being a member of the National Art Honor Society. We are very proud, but definitely not old enough for her to graduate :)

Nellysa receiving diploma

The walk past her classmates. There were almost 500 graduates.

Switching the tassel

The Graduate Procession

Nellysa leaving the arena

Mom checking to see if she actually got a diploma :)

Julie & 'Lys

Big -- I mean Little Brother

That's more like it!

Ashley V. & Nellysa
It was a long ride home.

One of the hottest days of the year so far and Nellysa had to wait outside for an hour before they could enter the arena.

Graduation was held at the Maryland Equestrian Center

June 5, 2010

Nellysa will be attending Boise State University in the fall.

Birds, Flowers, & Other misc. stuff

Saturday Drive

In May, we decided to go for a Saturday drive up to Lancaster County, PA. The only people that were good sports and went with us were Julie (DIL) and her friend Priscilla.

A family working their fields.
Priscilla wanted to take a picture of a cemetery to show her family in Brazil and so we found an old cemetery in Lancaster. It was a really cool cemetery. We found out that James Buchanan was buried there. He was the fourteenth president of the United States.

There was also a ground hog that lived there.

This tree was in the middle of the cemetery. It was like a picture from a horror show.

The End!

Flat Stanley's Visit

Kirk's nephew Ethan sent us Flat Stanley. His class is doing the Flat Stanley Project and we got to have him visit us. For those of you who don't know who Flat Stanley is, he is a character from a series of books who had a bulletin board fall on him thus making him flat. He mails himself around the world and learns about geography, history, etc. I don't know if he learned anything with us, but WE sure had fun with him.

The following video shows some of his adventures. I wanted to put it to music, but it just wasn't working .... so you just get pictures.

Storm Part 2

We just got dug out of the last storm on 6 Feb., and had another storm blow in on the 9th.

This storm was causing quite a bit of excitement with the weather reporters and so all that was on the local TV was "Storm Coverage". I shouldn't complain because we at least had power to watch the "Storm Coverage".

This picture is taken on Tuesday afternoon just as it was starting to snow.

We went out earlier to get some milk and a few other items to get us through the storm, but none of the stores had any milk left. One store got two pallets that morning, but it was gone fast. I went out late to take a sleeping bag to a friend in need, and since I was already out in the storm, I went to the little Shoppette on the base and they had 6 gallons of milk in. Yeah! I don't even drink milk, but the thought of not having any during a storm is un-nerving. Go figure.

This storm didn't deliver as much snow as the first one. We got about 8-10". But what made this storm significant was the winds and blizzard/white-out conditions. In Baltimore (10 min. away), they went into Phase 3 which means no one is allowed on the streets unless you are in an emergency vehicle.

Our front porch window This is the view from our living room. This room is on the second level so the snow you see is actually from the back patio roof. (normally you wouldn't even see the roof from there)

Back porch
We put seed on the front porch for the birds.
Our resident female Cardinal

Resident male Cardinal.

Weathering the storm.
Thursday, the day after. I even ventured out in the snow in my tennis shoes. (We're in Maryland... we don't get enough snow to warrant snow boots... ha,ha) I am not even standing at ground level.

The kids have had a good time playing in the snow.

Kelby and his friends built a snow tube.

Pretty impressive ehh....

This is the high school. The area from the trees to the flagpole is the parking lot. Behind the flagpole is the main entrance and the drifted-over stairs leading up to the doors. The icicles are vicious looking.

Here are the snow totals at BWI Airport, through Feb. 10:
December: 23.2 inches
January: 7.5 inches
February: 49.2 inches
Total: 79.9 inches (6' 7.9 inches)

Previous Record: 62.5 inches, set in 2002-03

We can now say that we survived the "Storm of 2010"

(that is unless they call out any more snow days from school)