A Trip to the ER

Tuesday evening we had to take Levi to the ER. He tripped over his own two feet while playing in the garage and landed right on a car part Cyle had on the floor. He had a gash from the middle of his upper lip all the way to his nose. Four stitches later he was doing okay. I don't know if it was more traumatic for him or me! My poor little baby! Today he was doing just fine. You wouldn't even know it had happened, except for the big cut on his face.

Thank You!

We're sending out a BIG THANK YOU to our families for all of your help moving us!
We couldn't have done it with you!

Next week my dad and step-mom will be here and have I got a to-do list for them! (well, Dad mainly...)

Riding Toys

Levi just cannot wait to be big. He wants to be a part of everything that Cyle and Clayton do. So when Clayton got to go on a go cart ride, Levi wanted one, too. And he couldn't have been more excited!


Cyle and I are not people that go out an buy new things. We take hand-me-downs, we shop craigslist, we try to get the best deal, so it was really exciting this past weekend for Cyle to go and buy a NEW lawn mower. Just a few short weeks ago, Cyle bought a 12 year old Craftsman lawn mower off of craigslist. While mowing our yard for just the 3rd time, the engine threw a rod. (I don't really know what that means, but it's totally irrepairable.) So, tired of dealing with lawn mowers that needed constant repairs, Cyle and Clayton went to Lowes and bought this beautiful new John Deere ZTR. The boys were almost as excited as Cyle. I'm excited that he's cut his mowing time in half. Yeah!

Cows N Corn

This past Saturday we went to Midland, VA to a great farm called Cows N Corn with our dear friends the Tolers. We had a great time riding a cow train, eating ice cream, watching a cow get milked, eating ice cream, playing with water pumps, climbing on play equipment, eating ice cream, taking a hay ride and touring the farm, eating ice cream. It was All You Can Eat Ice Cream Day and it was a blast!
Thank you so much Jonathan, Angie, Austin and Ashley for spending the day with us! We're so blessed to be living close to you!

We've Moved!

We're all moved in at our new home in Culpeper, Virginia (or Tulpepah, Weginia as Clayton says). And we LOVE IT! It's such a great neighborhood and our house is just perfect for us. Not all rooms have pictures on the walls (in fact, few rooms have pictures on the walls) and there are still boxes in our bedroom, but we feel like we're moved in. There is a fantastic screened in back porch that we all can't get enough of and the kitchen opens to the family room. The boys seem to like their room. They are sharing... I think we're really going to enjoy living here.
I promise to write more later about all the fun things we've been up to!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter day. The weather was gorgeous. The Easter Bunny was good to all of us and hid lots of eggs, which Clayton thoroughly enjoyed hunting. Church was nice. We were able to spend the day with good friends and eat lots of yummy food!

The Sap is Running

And so were we to the SUGAR BUSH! Saturday we went to Stanley's Olde Maple Lane Farm for a good old fashioned sugar bush. The best, best part of a sugar bush is the all-you-can eat pancakes and french toast and waffles and sausage and bacon with the best tasting maple syrup one has ever had. In fact, it was all so good, it didn't even occur to me to get out my camera and take a picture. My focus was the food!

The bucket is nearly full of sap. It pretty much looks like water when it comes out of the tree and tastes like it, too. It's just a little sweet. Not nearly as sweet as the maple taffy Clayton is enjoying in this picture. (He s-a-v-o-r-e-d his maple taffy for over three hours that day.) It takes 40 liters of sap to make 1, yes, 1 liter of syrup. And that is why real maple syrup costs so much.

After the sap is collected, it goes to the sugar shack where it is boiled and boiled and boiled until it is the wonderful liquid we all love: maple syrup. On this farm, the sugar shack was truly a shack. I've been to another farm where it was actually a really nice building...


This is just one of the vats where the sap is boiled down. There were a couple of stations and none of them really had sap in them. They just had water for demo purposes. The real maple farm (where all of the syrup we consumed came from) is in Lanark County, the maple capital of Ontario, so everything we saw was just for show...

...which didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Clayton is still enjoying his maple taffy.

The weather was gorgeous and warm on Saturday, so we took a ride around the farm. It was nice and relaxing. Actually, the weather was not at all cooperative for the maple season. Freezing nights and just above freezing days are the ideal temperatures for the sap to run. We've had really warm days and not quite freezing nights, so the trees are starting to bud. Fabulous for the rest of us. Not so fabulous for the maple farmers. Once the buds open, the sap turns bitter and can no longer be boiled down into syrup.
It was a great day, enjoying a truly Canadian tradition- so fitting as we're in our last month in Ottawa.