warm days this fall,

it would almost be a sin

not to do some

leaf jumping.

Did you jump this fall?

Knowing that we were taking two long trips in September, we didn’t want to tempt fate and knew we would have to put Old Faithful to rest this weekend.  Because we often take extra people with us and are planning to adopt a sibling group in the near future, we knew we had outgrown our mini-van.  Onward and upward to full-size vans.  We were leaning toward 12 passenger but there were none to be found this weekend and a 15 allows for a better trunk situation.

Meet Van-go (cleverly named by PJ).  We’re considering “Vinny” for short.

Which do you like better?

Our time at St. Mary’s was fun, educational, and a little wet.  Did you know sailors constantly swabbed the deck to keep the ship water tight…not to clean it?

For dinner we hit up the local carnival that was kind of like going back to the early 90’s…in many ways.  Think banana clips and perms and $5 crab cakes.

The campground we had originally made reservations at that sounded so idyllic online was far from what we envisioned so we set out to find Point Lookout State Park.  Much better.  It turned out it was also home to the best crabbing we’ve seen all summer.

The illusive crab is no long illusive.

Then it rained.  Lots.  And our tent flooded.

I know his face doesn’t say, “Excited.”

But he was.

where PJ catches an eel.

Then we could end up two counties over

playing colonial games,

and carding

and spinning wool.

The next day it wouldn’t be unusual to walk around Annapolis and then tour what was once the nation’s largest estate. 

We got all excited when they flowered until we read that flowers were bad when growing onions.  Who knew.  Basically flowers mean you planted at the wrong time and the bulbs are finished growing whether you like it or not.

So we pulled them all and have been enjoying them as spring onions. They’re pretty tiny but really tasty! We planted another batch so we’ll let you know how that goes since we put them in during the early summer instead of the late summer this time.

I love it because you can really capture the feel of a room.  In the above picture it saw the entire table, not just one side.  It’s like a slice of life captured on film on a blog.  Love it.

Unfortunately this is really the extent of  my Easter pictures.  My camera was sitting idlely on that very table while the kids galavanted around on Easter in their cute springy outfits.  I think Patrick caught a mobile shot on his Facebook.  That will have to do for this year.