Grandma's Visit

We are so happy to have Grandma here for a few days. We are all working on a jigsaw puzzle. Kate and Matthew came Sunday for dinner and to take Sabrina and Sarah home. Monday we (Terry, Victoria, Jenna and Grandma) went to Costco for groceries. We are enjoying visiting with her. Grandma is cheerfully tolerating the chaos which is a constant in our house. We love having her here but wish Granddad could be here too. by Terry

Visits

This weekend we had Sabrina and Sarah over. When they got here the first thing Sabrina said to me was "Where are the Polly Pockets?" And Sarah just screamed "doddy (doggy)"! She says doggy in a weird way, she is so funny. I had the privilege of putting Sarah down for her nap every day. We read the same stories we always do and Sarah laughed and laughed. While I put Sarah down Victoria and Sabrina played cheerleader. The pictures above are of Grandma (Mom) and the girls. Saturday we all went to the mall and the girls rode the Christmas train that Victoria, Andrew and I all rode when we were little. Victoria and I got paid to let mom and the girls play and we went to Claire's. While we were there we saw two girls get their noses and lips pierced. We got Mom's Christmas present *I hope she likes it*.

Autumn colors

Mom took these pictures a couple weeks ago and it was a blast! After this we had a leaf fight. Now it i snowing and freezing and 24 days left until Christmas!

Dog daycare

These are some of the very first pictures of Bella. No more Doggy Daycare.

Thankfully blessed

  Thanksgiving 2008. It was a rather a quiet one with just the five of us-Jim, Terry, Andrew, Victoria and Jenna; and of course Salem and Bella who was a great floor cleaner. 

   I really missed Grandma and Granddad this year. This is the first year in many, many Thanksgivings that Grandma was not here to either make the dinner or give me major advice on it. But the girls were a huge help with the cooking. They are getting to be really good in the kitchen and like to cook and bake.

  Alex is at his crash pad in New York City on standby or maybe flying somewhere.

  Dinner is over and Andrew is practicing being married by taking a nap on the couch after several platefuls of food. We are having pie with some friends at 4 and plan to play some games. Happy Thanksgiving!

Bella in Maryland

Well we took Bella to Kate's house for the first time and we thought we would never see Bella again she "joked" about dog napping her. I'm joking. Sabrina and Sarah loved her along with Kate. Everybody loved Bella. Bella also loved the boat she had a good time standing at the front of the boat. we got her a little blue life jacket from West Marine. She didn't mind the cold one bit.

Dog

Guess what I, VICTORIA ANNABLE GOT A DOG!!!!!!!!! Her name is Bella she is 5 years old, 20 lbs. and a papillion-mix breed. I love her so incredible much she is kind of hyper, but she loves long car rides!! We didn't tell dad about her so when he came home his jaw dropped to the floor. She is black and white and she has the cutest ears and tail. She has the biggest, most adorable eyes and she is the worlds best dog.

pictures

Halloween

On Halloween my friend Hannah came over and had a sleepover. Our original plan was to go around the neighborhood (not very far) but mom invited her friend and children over to trick or treat so she wanted to stay home and wait for them. Hannah, Jenna, and I went trick or treating by ourselves. Mom was going to meet up with us later but her friend never came.

We got to go trick or treating by ourselves. We went up our street and then on Middle Road and in the new neighborhood. We got lots of candy!! At our sleepover that night we ate almost all of our candy! I didn't want to but Jenna and Hannah went on ahead and ate it all. We stayed up all night. Hannah fell asleep at 3:00 and Jenna konked out at 4:30 and I didn't go to bed until 5:30.

We had a fun Halloween!!!!!!

by Victoria Annable

My First Ski Trip, by Victoria

When I was 10 I took a ski trip; it was fun I took a Ski Wee class and I went on a lot of slopes and we rented a ski house.
Jenna and I took an awesome Ski Wee class. For one hour we worked on our feet and getting used to our skis, from 9:00 am -11:00 am we went on the bunny slopes. When I first tried to get on the ski lift I fell over. From then on I was always careful getting on and off.
The slopes range from easiest to hardest like this: Green circle, double green circle, triple green circle, blue triangle, double blue triangle, triple blue triangle, black diamond, double black diamond, triple black diamond. I didn't go on any black but I did go on some blue. But my favorite slope was The Salamander, they call it The Salamander because it is really curvy.
Our ski house was huge! The Snelgroves rented it, too. At night we would go into the hot tub. If it was snowing that night it made it better. I mean snowing, bathing suit, cool. right? We would play games it was lots of fun spending time together.
Going skiing was tons of fun! I lovwd Ski Wee, all the sloipes and getting a ski house.

Sports I Enjoy Doing, by Jenna

I love to do certain sports. Some of them include Fencing, tennis, and skiing.
I just recently picked up fencing. It is a fast sport at times. There are not as many rules as some sports but it does have rules. On the first day we fenced I beat everyone in my class.
Tennis is a sport that my dad made us do. Now we enjoy it. Victoria always beats me no matter what, but the important thing is that I have fun.
Skiing is a sport we do mainly in winter. We stay in a house at the ski place. Its fun because there is a hot tub at every house.
I enjoy lots of sports. There are so many sports that I have yet to try.

Ski House

The day after Christmas is going to be awesome! Mom, Dad, Andrew, Jenna, Kate, Matt, Sabrina,Sarah and I are loading up the car and going skiing. I am so excited we got this really cool cabin near the ski place! I can't wait!!!!!!!!!! Jenna and I get the loft!

Family Vacation

This last week we had our vacation, and as we have done previous Octobers we spent the time on our boat.  Half way through the week, Jenna went to stay with Kate for three days and Victoria stayed with us. We always appreciate our girls hanging out with their big sister as she is such an incredible influence on them, and they really enjoy their nieces. The girls are at a great age! 

On Thursday they had the great Schooner race from the Bay bridge to Norfolk and we ventured out to watch the start. In the picture you can see the Schooner "Pride of Baltimore" race by us.  (We were not in the race...just wished we were). 

 On the way back to our anchorage Victoria took a picture of Terry and me by the Thomas Point light house.  Thomas Point LH is what they call a "Screwpile" LH and we usually stop by and take pictures of our guests in front of it, but never had our own taken. 

It was nice having just one of the girls for a period of time, and Victoria caught a LOT of fish.  We would go out in the mornings and evenings for an hour or so and I would mostly spend the time taking fish off of her lure.  The weather was indian summer wonderful.  

P.S. -

For those of you wondering about the girl's riddle - the "bicycles" are playing cards, and there should only be 52, not 53.  

What Victoria didn't write

So Victoria wrote about Echo Hill and all the activities except one which was bay studies. In the class we caught many fish. We caught a Pumpkin Seed Fish, eels, Small Mouth Bass, Blue Crabs, and some others that I can't think of. The Pumpkin Seed fish had an orange belly and whitish grayish top. We also caught 3 Eels; they were slimy and disgusting. The mall Mouth Bass had a huge mouth. We caught a Blue Crab it was annoyed with us in other words it was crabby. All in all we had a great time on bay studies. 

                                                                                                                          By Jenna 

p.s. We told riddles on the way if you figure it out post it on comments. 

There were 53 bicycles  on a table and a man dead on the floor. Why was the man MURDERED. 

Echo Hill Camp

We went on a field trip with the Pool's school. We went to Echo Hill Camp. It had a 150 acer campus. We got there around  11:00 and got settled in to our cabins. Our cabins were just big tents with a hard floor. There were 3 other schools there. While we just had 8 people from Bay Montessori the other schools had 80 or 90 people that came. The bathrooms were just big Johnny blues, they were disgusting!!! Any way every day we would wake up, go to the bathroom, get dressed, and go to breakfast. In the morning we couldn't shower because it was like 20 degrees!!! After breakfast we would have a morning activity, the lunch, then an afternoon activity and dinner and night activity. When we first got there we got settled and went to lunch. after lunch we had our first class. Our first class was outdoor survival. Then we had dinner. for our night activity we had a night walk. we couldn't use flashlights and we were tripping on everything!! We went to bed on bunk beds and under bug nets. We all wore 3 sweaters and each had a sleeping bag. The next morning we went to break feast and then to our morning activity. Our morning activity was adventure 1 we got to play lots of games and got to do the adventure course. The adventure course was fun we got to try to balance our teacher and us on a big seesaw. After lunch we had adventure 2. At adventure 2 we got to go on the big swing. The big swing was 2 big wires. we all got harnesses on and got a turn swinging. We had dinner and for our night activity we had debates on a Dr.Seuss book.We went to sleep and the next morning we had breakfast and did bay studies and then we went home.

                                                                           Victoria

Go Big Red

Andrew and I went to Lincoln to see Nebraska play VaTech. We also stopped by to see mom and dad, and Andrew had a chance to go out with Uncle John in search of prairie chickens to shoot Sat morning. They are safe for at least another year. We had a good time, although dad is not doing so well. It is always nice to be with family, and we look forward to our visit next month.

As you all know we went to D.C. for a small field trip and went to museums here a some of the minerals we saw.

The Burwell Mill

When we came home from D.C. mom decided to stop at an old mill. It was spooky a cool. we ground black corn and different spices. After we stoped at Blandy to walk it was incredibly boring but mom wanted to.

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We were in D.C. all weekend and I am exhausted! We walked 5 miles! We saw almost all the monuments. My favorite was the Washington monument we took an elevator to the very top and we could see all of D.C. we took lots of pictures but we have a problem with our computer so we can't up load pictures until dad comes home. We saw the Natural History Museum, that was my favorite I saw the the Hope Diamond and all these other pieces of jewelry worn by queens and kings of other nations I love D.C.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Victoria

Washington D.C.

We have been busy for a couple weeks which means we have been on a trip. This time we are in Washington D.C. so far we have been to The Natural History Museum it was amazing! We saw the Hope Diamond, rubies, diamonds, extinct animals (stuffed) and much more.


My favorite exhibit was the world's largest diamond; it was amazing! I also liked the rarest mineral/diamond in the world.It was black but it had a red star in the middle. The Star of Asia was pretty. It was blue with a white star in the middle. There were also diamonds worn by queens, kings, and famous people.


The Air and Space Museum was interesting but we didn't see it all. We saw the gift shop, a simulator, planes, and the bathroom. The simulator was OK but a kid about nine was whimpering in the back for 5 minutes! I bought space food in the gift shop which was fun to eat. It was ice cream flavored (don't tell my Dad :T )


We went up in the Washington Monument top! It was amazing! I saw the White House, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and everything from the top of the Washington Monument!!!!
Jenna

PS We'll have to add pictures later, we are having "technical difficulties" with uploading pictures from the camera to the blog-"mom" aka Terry

Weekends by Victoria

This is a writing assignment for English:

Things I like to do on the weekend are things like skating, sleepovers, and playing tennis. My favorite is having a sleepover with my best friend Hannah. At our sleepovers we play games, do makeovers, watch a movie, do nails, and stay up all night. Our favorite thing to do out of everything is talk. We will talk all night! We will start out talking about school and then it will sort of take a wacky turn and turn in to what kind of dental floss we use, then turn into who is the best small group leader. (at Youth group) One time we played a practical joke on her little brother. He now locks his door at night!
My best friend Hannah and I always have a good time no matter what.

Just In Case

Just in case you ever get bored look up Tim Hawkins on youtube he is so funny!!!!

Bored

Have you ever been so bored that you just felt tired? Maybe it was just fencing, but sitting around waiting for a 2 year old to fall asleep is not my idea of fun. We are at Kate's house and Sabrina is at school. Jenna and i are sitting here writing this blog and it is boring. Any way Kate is feeling sick but, not that bad.

Fencing

Dad wanted us to take fencing. Pros. make fencing look easy right? They all look like people in white vests waving swords around right? It is a lot more than that, they have incredible leg mussel. In 15 minuets of excersize our coach had us out of breath and our legs were shaking. Lets just put it this way, I am suprised that I can still walk!!

Fencing

Tonight was fencing and I surprised I'm still breathing! He worked us really hard. We got to stop for ice cream on the way back and nothing I repeat nothing tasted so good in my life.

For exercisers we did tap dancing exercises ballet exercises and all holding a saber at 45 degrees. It was painful but we got through it. Right now I keep getting cramps so that's all I have to say.

My Best Birthday Ever

On my birthday we went to the beach with some of my friends. I got a hamster 175 dollars, a hamster, 4 gift cards, sweet tarts, gum, and t-shirts. We started the day with lunch and cake. The n we opened presents. Sometime later we haeded to the beach and swam for a half hour then tubed. It was so fun.

Birthday Party August 16, 2008

we had our birthday at the lake holiday and we went tubing. we got a big cake from Costco and everybody had a great time!!

Genarations

Here are some photos of Sabrina playing with Kate's toys. (and victoria being lazy and weird.)

For a week or so Vic and I are sitting for another animal but there is a twist on this one it's a cat! I got a hermit crab or 5. in the pictue it shows 3 the other two are arriving on Sabrina and Sarah's' visit. The one in the pink shell is named Ariel. The one in the swirled shell is Cinderella and the one in the spiked shell is Bell. The other two are Jasmin and Sebastien. anyway the cats name is Jukes, and Salem has enjoyed the company only she is very territorial around her water. I know some of you are probably thinking what the heck. I know its weird but its true. she gets testy and hisses and breaks out the claws she doesn't use them but just for show. She also shows her teeth. Its kind of funny to watch. If Jukes move Salem blocks her even if shes balancing on the window sill.

Stills Went On Our Boat