We put down a Harrisonburg day on our summer fun list. I love Harrisonburg. It's about 50 minutes away from our house. I know I also say I love Charlottesville and I really do but I think I would be quite happy in Harrisonburg too. It just has a different, friendly feel that I really like, more down to Earth. Plus their children's museum is way better, they have an official roller skating rink, cool-different parks, public swimming pools that aren't way over priced and Hobby Lobby. Its also way more affordable than Charlottesville. It's got a lot going for it. Charlottesville seems to have this superiority complex. I don't know if its UVA or Monticello or what but I feel a big difference when I am in Charlottesville or other nearby cities. For this Harrisonburg day we went to the Children's museum as I had 2 free passes, had a lovely picnic lunch and then spent the afternoon at their public pool. I originally wanted to go to this pool because online it said they had water slides and "visit a water park" is also on our summer fun list but when we got there the slides were gone. I was admittedly pretty irritated because just the night before I had checked their website and it showed pictures of them and talked about them and we were all looking forward to trying them out. But I still love it there. I think it would be fun to drive up there on one of the school professional development days this Fall and park hop. Jared and Lydia are starting to age out of parks but I think trying out new ones would excite them. We met some friends at the museum and enjoyed the exhibits. Since the last time we had been there they had opened up the 2nd floor and it was nice to have another space to explore. They are also aging out of children's museums, they are just getting so much older. It was a fun day.
I loved this real life only "shorter" kitchen. Lydia spent a lot of time in here.
Tuesday we went to a friend's birthday party and then went creeking at Preddy Creek in the afternoon. The weather last week was amazing! We had hiking and creeking on our list too and were happy to check them off. We hadn't been to Preddy Creek since last Fall probably and it had really changed. Well, the hike was the same but when we got to the creek we discovered a really nice bridge was almost done being built. The "entrance" to the water and course of the creek had really changed. I actually like it more now. Jared and Lydia were happy to play in the water and were great sports on the little "hike" more of a walk to get there. At the party we enjoyed slip-n-sliding on a super fun slip-n-slide and snow cones.
These bowling pins were great.
"Traffic Jam"
Were lucky we have such fun cool friends.
Totally did not expect to see this massive sturdy bridge here!
It looks like they are almost done with it.
Since the weather was so nice we went on another little hike the next day. I had heard a lot of people talk about swimming at Sugar Hollow and how much they loved it so we added it to our summer fun list. My 10K took place there, its a really pretty area. I remember thinking as I Ran it that it would be fun to bring our bikes there. Its pretty and really flat and not busy at all. The hike was really easy and pretty. We crossed over the river and the water was so clear. It was lovely. We were fortunate that there were only 2 other families there as online it talked about how popular it was. The hike was easy and a great length for Jared and Lydia. Apparently there are 2 waterfalls. We only hiked to the first one and Jared and Lydia could have hiked more but it was a good stopping place.
The water was super clear and so pretty with the rock wall. It was my favorite spot on the hike. We chatted with two older gentlemen at this spot. They were in their upper 60's and had great southern accents. It was fun to chat and see these 2 older guys out hiking with each other.
In order to get Jared to jump Mark told him he would jump in too. Once Jared jumped he loved it and did it multiple times, Lydia too. The water was quite cold and so pretty. We will for sure do this hike again.
That was the end of the summer fun list for the week. Mark and I have been talking about needing to stain our deck for awhile now. Since the weather was so nice Mark decided now was the time to get it done. We borrowed a pressure washer and went to town washing everything we could think of! I could not believe how much mildew and algae had "grown" on our deck and house. It was fascinating and kind of mesmerizing to watch the wood turn back to wood color. I read about it online and some people said it was okay to pressure wash the siding on your house and others said it was not. Isn't that the case with everything? It kind of drives me crazy. Anyway. We went ahead and did it and I think our house looks much less green now and more gray which makes me really happy. We did our front porch, deck, siding, shutters, doors, fence and the brick on the bottom of the house. It all looks great and was even kind of fun. I think when Mark finishes the deck (which is a huge project, I mean our deck is massive and two levels.) we may even spruce up our front door and shutters. I think that popular pretty dark blue would look great. Jared and Lydia did a great job playing at home in and out while Mark and washed everything. Mark did 99.3% of it but I am happy I can say I did help.
It's just so big!! Mark worked most of the day and is probably just under 3/4 of the way done.
Gray! My 2nd favorite color.
Mark sent me a picture of the stain samples and I of course knew I wanted gray. I am happy with it. Its sort of odd to not have it more wood like, seeing as how its a wood deck, but I think it looks nice. I do think it will have blue undertones at times which I don't love but I can't control the lighting outside so so be it.
As Mark was pressure washing everything outside, Jared, Lydia and I were on our hands and knees cleaning the grout in our kitchen. I had known it was dirty and needed a good scrubbing but also didn't really pay a lot of attention to it for the last 2 years or so, whoops. So we made a baking soda and vinegar paste and got to work scrubbing it. Jared and Lydia were a big help, they didn't love it although they did think it was fun to clean with a toothbrush. We got about half of it done and already it is looking dirty again. Sigh. We even purposely chose gray grout not white so it wouldn't look as bad but I don't think it worked as well as we hoped. I just need to add it to a cleaning rotation or something, then maybe it wouldn't take as long. Who am I kidding, it will probably always take much longer than I think it should. Oh well.
By Saturday afternoon Mark had finished pressure washing most of our property... so we headed over to the Earlysville Reservoir to go kayaking. We hadn't gone as a family in quite some time and it was a great outing. We had Lydia ride with Mark for the first half than with me for the second. She really wanted to paddle this time so I let her and ended up much wetter than I normally do. Next year she will be in her own kayak! There as a strong wind that we had to paddle into on the way out and then when we turned around hoping to get a little boost from the wind it died down. I was proud of how well Jared paddled, we went pretty far and that wind was strong! It was a great family outing though and we were all glad we went.
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