Pictures from MA trip

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Remembering Grandpa

This picture was taken last summer when Matt, Angie, Stef and I went to visit Grandpa and Lee.

Grandpa definitely had a way with making you feel welcome... no matter who you were. I think Susan stated it perfectly when she said he made her kids feel like they were his own grand kids right from the beginning. Stef lost her last Grandparent 15 years ago and Grandpa made her feel like she was one of his own right from the start.

Every time we think of Grandpa a smile comes to our faces. From his infectious laughter to his eternal sense of optimism and his incredible faith we will always remember the last time we spoke... he said how proud he was of all us Kohl kids and how it made him feel when he talked with us and about us to other people.

We love you Grandpa and will miss you incredibly. Lee, you are in our thoughts and prayers. Thank you so much for everything you have given to our Grandpa and the way you have been able to fill in perfectly as our Grandma Lee.

Picnics n Such

I mentioned in an earlier post that we were going to a picnic at the homestead of a lady that Jared made contact with through our county message board. So, the event was last week. These folks live on this beautiful piece of property near the base of the mountains. They had it all, barbecue, a live bluegrass band, and pony rides.

The barbecue guys...

We seem to run into beagles everywhere now...

We had a great time. The weather was beautiful and it was good to get out and see another part of our county and meet other residents. While hanging around we walked over to the area where they keep their cattle. In addition to the cattle they have 2 miniature donkeys (I guess that's what they are, or are they burros?--who knows) As soon as we approached the fence one of them became VERY interested in us. He would follow us up and down the fence line, sticking his head out for a scratch. He was also very interested in the dogs. He watched them closely and would get distracted from following me when one of the dogs moved around...

This week we decided to get out and enjoy another beautiful weekend, and hopefully get some good pics of the fall foliage. It seems that next week will really be the peak, so we plan to take a drive out to Shenandoah National Park and see what's what with the leaves then. Our outing this weekend was at the Manassas Battlefield Park. It's a great little place to hike that's local. Most of the time it's not busy, but being fall and all, the leafers are out in full force. But even when it's busy there is plenty of room to spread out with trails through the forest or through the fields, just depends on what you like. Here are a few pics...

If the weather holds like this we'll still have a few more weeks of good hiking! I love fall! I have to say it's my favorite season. It brings out all kinds of wildlife (a big old owl has perched outside of our house lately, hooting away at night), smells, sounds, and of course the beautiful colors--that is most times. I hope the leaves actually change on the trees this year before hitting the ground. Well, that's it for now...but what post of ours would be complete without pictures of our flea circus? :-)

Clockwise from top: Oscar, Maggie, Daisy, Romeo

Busy Weekend

Here we are again...post # 3, wow, we're making a habit of this. Anyhow, we were pretty busy last weekend. Let's start with: Fun With Flooring. The title says it all:

So we've had this flooring since the end of July. We're slow, but still working on it. My guess is that we MIGHT have the hall and small bedroom finished by Christmas (ugh). No, really we're working hard to get it finished by the time Matt gets out here for Adam's boot camp graduation...it would be nice to have somewhere for him to sleep (and I'm sure he'd appreciate it too).

It's going much better than we could have imagined. As long as you take your time with the measurements and make sure that your first row is straight, you're good to go! This is what we've finished so far:

Not too bad for a couple of handyman-impaired home owners :-)

In between flooring sessions we took the dogs to a Beagle Day outing. They had a great time meeting other beagles and owners. Ok, let me clarify, Oscar loved meeting the other beagles, Daisy loved meeting the owners. They were in total sensory overload. Toys, other dogs, people, lots of stuff to experience--they just didn't know where to start.

Here is Daisy, in heaven, with a little girl she met.

And here is Oscar with a friend he made (Oscar is on the left).

Needless to say they were very happy and very tired by the time we left...what a nice, quiet ride home.

Yes, that's Daisy walking over and getting attention from someone who was petting another dog... just butts her way in...

Puppy Dogs

A Post- Finally!!!

Ok, so we've had this blog forever but have never posted to it. I know, we're lame. We've both decided that the least we could do is post pictures of the dogs-then maybe you'd believe how boring we are.

Lately this hasn't been entirely true. We have had a couple of activities to break up the usual routine. Three weeks ago we went up to Philadelphia and saw the King Tut exhibit that was in town. We made it a day trip by train (I am totally in love with train travel now). I have to say that the museum did a great job presenting everything. The displays and the audio tour were very well done. We had a great time.

Then two weeks ago we went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival.

This is the second year we've gone, both times with friends from work. We had a great time eating steak-on-a-stake and watching all of the different shows. Almost as entertaining is watching the other patrons of the festival in their interesting costumes.

Here we see Scott (in the kilt) playing the role of "mankind" in the story of Pandora's Box. It was quite entertaining, especially since he couldn't do anything about the fact that his wife and I were snapping picture after picture of the whole thing. Ha ha! He was a good sport about it though, and too good at the caveman grunting noise he had to make (yes, it was a speaking part of sorts :-) ).

Other out of the house activities are in the future...we'll be taking the dogs to a Beagle Dog Day event (I'm not quite sure, but I think it's just a giant doggie playground) where our 2 beagles can meet a bunch of others from around the area. After that there is a BBQ hosted by one of our county residents that Jared has befriended. I'll let him post about how he came to know this lady later on.

We've had a few projects at home that have occupied quite a lot of our time. I think we bit off more than we could chew when we decided to tear out the carpet upstairs and put down wood flooring. It isn't that the job is hard, just very time consuming when you aren't a professional installer, are working on it only on the weekend (sometimes), and have to shuffle all of your belongings from room to room.

When we get tired of the floors we look to the yard for a distraction, and living in the country there are plenty of them.

Our backyard has been a bit of a project. We were out there this weekend pulling up the big, obvious weeds-trying desperately to keep the forest from reclaiming it. It's not as hideous as it once was, so I consider that progress.

Well, that's it for now. We've really enjoyed reading everybody else's blogs, so we hope you all will enjoy ours too...if we can keep it up ;-)