Virginia is for LOVERS!

Mark and I were going to celebrate our 10-year anniversary in Costa Rica - but after doing some homework on the area I realized that it was going to be the rainy season in May (when my parents were coming to be present here for Adam's baptism) so we decided to go to Northern California instead and use our Spirit Airlines miles to fly there. I would show Mark my mission and its beautiful areas, visit old friends and discover the Redwoods together. 

But it did not happen... Once I got my dad's travel dates and looked into booking our award tickets, I could not find reasonable award tickets with our dates... I shared the disappointed news with Mark who  then had a great idea - what if we stayed in Virginia and discovered waterfalls?... after all, Virginia is for lovers!!

We had such a fantastic week going from one spectacular waterfall to a charming one... What a refreshing and romantic week...  

Falling Spring on Day one... Wow!

Falling Springs for the bottom of the waterfall... 

Pembroke Cascades... An adorable trail along the stream on our way to the waterfall

 Love this sign!!

Pembroke Cascades

An adventure to get to Fall Creek Falls 

Sunday afternoon leisure walk to Whitetop Laurel Falls and a huge storm on our walk home!

Whitetop Laurel Falls on a beautiful day...

Middle Little Stoney Falls

Upper Little Stoney Falls

  

Charming town of Buena Vista

Spectacular Crabtree Falls - 1700 feet of hiking along continuous waterfalls

Crabtree Falls 

I thought we already had one monkey in our family... =)

 

Batman Party!

Poor Antoine... we had never given him a real birthday party (he had had a special dinner with family friends a couple of times but not a birthday party...)... mostly due to the fact that he is born in February and I never felt like hosting a party with a bunch of toddlers cooped up in our home... so this year Antoine was begging for a birthday party with his friends so I told him we would wait for the weather to be good so that we could spend part of the party outside... He accepted and waited patiently for the Spring to come... only to have rain the day of the party!! 

We had gotten from friends from our ward decorations for a Batman party and Antoine loved the idea right away. We asked everyone to come dressed up to make it even more fun!

 

 

 

Guess who is enjoying the gifts as well?

Esther visiting us...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antoine at work with Papa...

Antoine was anxiously waiting for his turn this year to spend a day with Mark at the FTC

 

We don't stop a tradition we love...

Every year we spend April General Conference with our dear friends the Isaacsons in Maryland. This year, Tom and Ginny could not keep our tradition so we went there a couple of weeks later and a wonderful time - kids playing in the huge yeard, adults catching up on our busy lives, and everyone enjoying a fire and some smores!

It is a wonderful time of the year!

I love Spring with its numerous colors as Nature becomes alive again...

We had not been to the Cherry Blossom for a a couple of years and we sure enjoyed a beautiful day with our friends!

 

Fun at Chuck E Cheese!

We started a rewards system for Adam and Antoine to do their chores and one of the things they can earn is an outing to Chuck E Cheese, which they chose this time...

Victor was not thrilled by some of the activities at first but he warmed up to others and we all had a great time! 

 

Where did Spring go???

From my previous post, spring had arrived and we had already enjoyed some times outdoors... but snow is back and even enough to build a snowman!!

This was Victor's first interaction with the snow and he really liked it! He loved going down the hill on his baby sled and had a great time watching the other kids play!

Once back home and Victor put down for his morning nap, I helped the boys build a snowman and they called him "Snowy". 

 

Spring is here!!

We took advantage of the beautiful weather Saturday to go out with our bikes to one of the playgrounds in the neighborhood and bring our balls to practice our basketball skills... =)

Victor has not been anxious to stand or walk since he has done his first steps a month ago... but he surprised us by standing and holding the basketball!

Our happy 18-month old crawler....

 

Not sure about the swing...
He seemed to like it very much last Fall but I guess he has no remembrance of it...

His favorite part was definitely the playground... from going up and down the stairs to crossing the bridge and going down the slide with Daddy...

Simple joyful memories together...

Putting up with two older brothers!

The three boys were in the bathtub together and Adam and Antoine thought it was very funny to cover Victor with suds... Victor is such a champ... Look at his angelic face!!

 

A first for Victor...

We had snow this week and Mark, Adam and Antoine spent the morning outside playing and sledding. The snow was really slushy and they came home completely soaked...

We made a fire and it is quite an event for us... Remember we had carpet all over our main floor so I was not really fan of dragging dirty wood throughout the house but now we can use the fireplace with easy clean-up... Adam and Antoine were thrilled but Victor was quite intrigued by this new experience!

He did not quite get used to the sudden noises of the wood crackling and would start crying each time the fire would make a "pop" sound...

 

Happy boys...