Air and Space

Finally, soccer season is over. We were supposed to finish our season with a tournament in Richmond this past weekend, but with the recent heavy rains, the tournament was cancelled due to standing water in the fields.
Since we were supposed to be gone on Sat and had no plans, I decided it was time to go visit the Air and Space museum in Dulles, VA. This is something I have been wanting to do for some time. It came at a good time too because Eamon has just finished reading a book on WWII Bomber Planes and he is doing a report on it. Shannon also loves reading about military planes and he loves to construct jets, planes and space vechicles with K'nex and Legos. We also rented the movie Apollo 13 for the kids to watch on Friday night.
Here is a sampling of our past weekend:

This is a Star Wars ship that Shannon put together this summer. Then it broke when he decided to play with it. And Shannon is so detailed about things that he took EVERY SINGLE piece apart and reconstructed the whole ship. He just finished it for the 2nd time this weekend.

This is the Enterprise Space Shuttle - acquired by the museum in 1985. It is rather amazing to see in person.

This is an interesting plane we found.

Here we are in the observation tower. The tower looks out at the landing strip of Dulles ariport and you can watch the planes land.

Here is Shannon with his 2nd Star Wars ship of the weekend. He also constructed a jet plane and another small space vechicle with his K'nex.

We had a great time at the museum. We all tried out the simulator rides that they have. We ate lunch at the McDonalds that is right in the building. And we finished the afternnon off by watching an IMAX film on Fighter Pilots.

Whew!!! With all this Air and Space, my head feels like it is spinning in the clouds! What next??? Maybe we should rent Top Gun.......

What kind of muffins??

This evening as Shannon was trying to do his homework, Craig was in the next room vacuuming the living room. Shannon could not work with all the noise, so he covered his ears and said, " I need some ear muffins!!" I'm sure ear muffins would not taste good, and I don't think they would be very noise resistant either. :)

Virginia Beach 2009

Oct 9-11 found us in Virginia Beach for a soccer tournament. It was a beautiful weekend for the most part. The soccer games did not go well for Eamon's team, but we had a lot of fun anyways!!

Here's the whole crew enjoying the hot tub and pool at the hotel: Shannon and Robert Miller in the pool, and in the hot tub we have Matthew Lovinger, Andrew Miller, Jake Lovinger, Eamon and Hannah Lovinger.

Before and after the tournament we were able to spend a little time on the beach. We we arrived on Fri afternoon, the temp was in the 80's. The water felt cold to me, but the boys enjoyed riding the waves.

Who are those "surfer-dudes"??

On Sunday after the tournament, we all (the Lovinger's, the Miller's and us) went to the beach and walked on the boardwalk. The temp was a little cooler, in the 70's. And we had some really good ice cream. This weekend was a great way to officially end the summer of 2009!!

Is it Halloween already??

For some reason, the boys got into the costumes last weekend. They played "Star Wars" all weekend long.
This is our new neighbor, Joseph. We are glad that he likes to play Star Wars and he has his own costume too!!

Shannon as Anakin Skywalker.

Eamon the fierce warrior.

Here is the whole crew. If you happened to be driving thru the neighboorhood this past weekend, you may have seen them running around.

Glen Kiser Jr???

A couple weeks ago we had a problem with water leakage from our refrigerator. Of course our first reaction was to "call Dad" as he always knows what to do. Even though it was 7:30 in the evening, he came on over to check out our fridge and luckily, he was able to find the problem and fix it.

As you can see, Shannon was right there with him.

You can easily get Shannon's attention whenever something is being taken apart. He loves to see how things work and he thinks he knows how to fix everything. Which makes us wonder - is he another Glen Kiser??

This thought was confirmed for me this morning. As we were on our way to church, the boys were talking about cleaning my car. Eamon was saying how the wheels are very dirty and need to be cleaned. I made sure they knew that if the wheels get cleaned, the whole car needs to be cleaned first. So, Shannon says, "First we will clean the car, then we will clean the wheels and then we will fix the engine". That got my attention and I asked "What is wrong with my engine?" And Shannon says, "We need to fix it so it can accelerate faster" !!!

The End of an Era

Times change and children grow.
My children have decided that they don't need our "play gym" in the back yard anymore. There has been some discussion for about 2 years now about taking it down and replacing it with a garden. This spring Eamon took the original roof off and replaced it with a "new" roof. Then he and a friend painted the play gym black. Now the boys decided that it is time to come down.....

They enjoyed the destruction very much.

But, it saddened me to see the structure come down - my boys are not little anymore.
My hope is that next summer I will have pictures of a wonderful garden in our backyard.
As they say....when one door closes, another door opens.

Food for Thought

I wish I had a picture of what I woke up to this morning..... Craig and I had the rare opportunity to sleep in till 9:00 this morning. When I started to get up and walk out of the bedroom, Shannon greeted me with a "go back and rest for a few minutes". I knew then that something was happening. Shannon soon appeared in our bedroom, all decked out with a dress shirt, vest, tie and a pair of soccer shorts - with a menu of breakfast choices!! We chose waffles and milk for our breakfast. Eamon was our chef and he did a fabulous job of making breakfast. They sure made me feel like a queen this morning.
And I should have a picture of this evening as well.... Eamon had a friend over and asked me to make a fruit pizza. I had all the ingredients, so I made the crust and the cream cheese topping and had some fruit available. Then we all sat down and made our own customized fruit pizza squares. It was fun to see what the boys chose to put on their squares of pizza.