Camping Whitewater Memorial State Park

Went on our first family only camping trip with the new camper this weekend. Went to a park we have never visited before, Whitewater Memorial State Park. Very nice park with a little lake and nice wooded campsites. Of course it rained for 12 hours from 3am to 3pm on Saturday. This blew hiking and paddle boating plans away but we still had a nice time driving around and playing in the camper.
We remain confident that we will have a nice dry weekend of camping soon, maybe.
Off to Winton Woods in Cincinnati next!

Camping 5/16/08 - 5/18/08 GC Spring Picnic

Our first trip out with the new camper was this weekend. We went to Ouabache State Park for the Indiana Geocaching Spring Picnic. It had rained for a week before we arrived and the the campground was soaked. Had this been a family only trip and not an event with a bunch of friends, it would have been miserable, but a great time was had by all.
Still a few items to get straight on the camper, but in time it will be like new!
Off to Whitewater Memorial State Park next!

Spring has sprung!

A few things that have been happening over the past few months:

Milo has moved out of the Little Ninjas program into the Beginner class, training alongside older kids and adults. He has already promoted to yellow belt and is scheduled to promote to orange belt at the end of April. And can you believe it? He actually broke a board with a front snap kick at his yellow belt promotion!!

Speaking of his orange belt promotion, the ceremony is also on his 6th birthday (April 25th). I can't believe my itty bitty baby boy is turning six!!!

Now that the weather is trying to warm up a bit, Matt & I are itching to start on our outdoor projects... of which we have many. The biggest one is cleaning up our new camper. We bought a 25' Nomad travel trailer. It hasn't been used by the previous owner much at all, but is definitely a bit dusty. We spent this past weekend cleaning her up inside and can't wait to hit the road!

Other projects on the horizon include putting in a new patio and getting the veggie garden going for this year. Hopefully the weather will be agreeable over the next few weeks so we can knock those projects out of the way in between camping trips. :)

Have a lovely Spring, all!

Where has time gone???

I have really been ignoring this blog... fortunately no one reads it, so I suppose it only really matters to me. :)

Since I last logged in, Milo has earned three belts through his Little Ninja program - he went from white, to yellow-stripe, to orange-stripe and just this past Saturday promoted to blue-stripe belt. He is doing so well in the program. Matt & I have noticed definite changes in him, the most obvious being his ability to work within a team atmosphere. He's now a supportive member of the team who loves to cheer on his teammates (as opposed to getting upset because it "wasn't his turn").

Some of my family (mom, dad, Melissa & Eli) came to visit from Texas back in October. We rented a gorgeous cabin in Brown County and spent several fun days just hanging out. Milo especially enjoyed seeing his newest cousin, Eli, who was 10 months old at the time.

Speaking of Eli, he just passed his first birthday on December 14th. Happy birthday, little guy!!

Matt & I are doing fine. I started a new job in August that I really enjoy. It helps to work in a motivating, supportive atmosphere... I'm glad I finally gave that idea a shot! LOL Matt has been trying to reduce his hours spent at the patio shop and next year's plan is for him to work on an extremely limited capacity, basically only when they're strapped (no pun intended) for time & manpower.

Happy holidays to all!

Milo earns his first belt!

Tonight Milo earned his first belt in Karate (white). He also earned his 2nd stripe - they wrap around the end of his belt, he earns one each class. Today's stripe was black, he earned it for "fitness". Last week, he earned a white stripe for "modesty." A certain number of stripes will lead to his earning of the next color belt. He's seen in the photo being awarded his belt by his instructor, Miss Tuttle.

He's also working on a longer term assignment to earn his "discipline" stripe by cleaning his room at least once a day for 21-days. Whoo-hoo!!

Little Ninja

We were looking into an activity for Milo this year. Soccer didn't go over too well last year and there's really not much else in the immediate area without joining the YMCA, which isn't terribly close to us either.

I found a Martial Arts studio nearby and on a whim, we let Milo join in one of the classes designed for 3-6 year olds and it was a HUGE hit. So Milo is now officially a Little Ninja!

The best part is that after only one class, he's already addressing Matt & I as "sir" and "ma'am"!! :)

Genealogy

Many of you already know that Matt & I have been working on our families' history for quite a few years now. We've done tons of work and are happy to share it with you. But we'd also love to have your help filling in a few blanks.

On our Genealogy page, we have a link to our family tree. If you have some information to add, PLEASE let me know. Every little bit helps!

One quick thing - this particular family tree software is only temporary. It has certain limitations (like not listing more than two children per family because we're currently using an unregistered version), but at least it gives us a little something to show while we research better programs. We'll make an announcement on the genealogy page once we've found a format we're happy with.

In the future, I am planning to add a "Brick Wall" listing of relatives we've gotten ourselves stumped on. Like Matt's great-grandfather, Henry Randolph Anderson. He was a Texas doctor who claimed on his Texas Medical Association application to have attended Louisville Medical College. Well just a couple of days ago, I came across a fairly accurate source (the school itself!) that says he wasn't a student there. So did he really attend LMC or did he fib on his application? And who are his parents? Oh golly, I have a whole list of folks like this!

Welcome!

Hello all! Welcome to our family blog. Keep an eye out for updates and announcements here. Since our families are so spread out, we thought this might be a nice way to keep everyone up-to-date.

If you have something you'd like to add, there are a couple of ways to do it - you can become a "member" of this blog, just ask Matt or myself to email you an invite (by doing this you can also comment on other blog posts). Or you can email Matt or myself with the news and we'll be happy to post it for everyone to see. We'd also love updated photos every now and then for the other pages of the website.

Please note, this site is really only intended for our family and we won't be spreading the link around, but it is technically a public site. So let us know right away if you see anything posted (photo or text) that you'd rather not have on our site and we'd be more than happy (and not in the least bit offended) to remove it.

Take care.
Love,
Matt, Alicia & Milo

Milo's First Camping Trip

We headed out to Lake Monroe, about an hour south of us, for Milo's first camping trip. We were a bit worried whether or not we'd make it down since we had several days of rain prior to the planned weekend, but around 11am on Friday, the skies cleared and we hit the road around 4pm.

Milo was armed with a brand new fishin' pole. It had a practice plug on the line so he could practice casting. He did pretty darn good, throwing a 10-15 ft cast after only a few practice throws at the campsite. He and Matt went out to fish from the shore Saturday morning, while I threw together breakfast, but Milo quickly got bored and no fish were harmed during this outing.

We did a little geocaching as usual on all of our trips, adding three more to our total (267 in all), drove into Nashville for lunch, then took a nice drive around the area to check out another local lake, Lake Lemon.

We got back home in time for lunch on Sunday. We let Milo play in his little pool while Matt & I cleaned out the camper and van. Then we spent a relaxing afternoon hanging out at home as the rain drifted back into town. While I napped and Milo played, Matt booked another two camping trips for this summer... can't wait!!!