Thanksgiving and Stuff

Wow. November has flown by. We actually had a pretty quiet month. Just the run of the mill doctor's appointments for the kids and Bill and I both were able to get away for a weekend (separately) of retreat/hanging out with the boys time.

For my retreat I went to Lake Anna on the annual WOW retreat. Rev. Barbara Minor lead our program and it was wonderful! What a treat to be able to connect with God, my friends and myself without being a mom on call 24/7. I even went for a run both days! I took my camera with me, but took no pictures, I'm sorry to say.

The day I returned Hailey and Maddy had a super fun Girl Scout outing called encampment. They went on a 45 min. long hike, then built a campfire and roasted hotdogs and s'moores. It was GREAT fun. They came home smelling like a wood fire - one of the best smells known to man.

The next weekend it was Bill's turn to disappear with the boys. They went to Deep Creek Lake for their annual boys weekend. Bill was able to nap (his favorite past time) and they enjoyed some snow!

Thanksgiving day was quiet this year. Mom and Dad were to come for the weekend, but they ended up staying home due to sickness. We are very glad that we will be seeing them at Christmas and hope that everyone is healthy for the visit! With mom and dad at home and Paula sick, we postponed the Thanksgiving Feast until Saturday. We had GREAT food, Neil dubbed it the best tasting Thanksgiving Feast so far (high praise indeed). Grandma Joyce made the turkey and gravies, Paula brought the stuffing and I made the green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, spinach & artichoke dip, breads, lime cheesecake and carrot cake - we were all stuffed by the end of the night. Hailey bought Silly String for all the kids (with her birthday money) and they sprayed our tree in the front yard. It looks like Spanish Moss is dripping from the tree - they loved it! I loved being surrounded by my family. I can't think of a better way to spend Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Patch, Great Falls and Birthday Mania

October is over?!?! How can that be, it just started yesterday. SIGH. Anyway...October was chalk full of activities. I was able to chaperone Maddy's kindergarten class at the pumpkin patch...but forgot the camera. :-( However, Laura was nice enought to bring her entire family to VA so that we could go to the pumpkin patch with them! YEA! OK, she didn't come to VA to go to the pumpkin patch with us, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :-) We went to Cox Farm, spent an arm and a leg to get in and had a blast. I think we were there for 5+ hours, but I lost track of time and my mind along the way. There were really big slides, a corn maze, kettle corn, more slides, petting zoos, hay rides and other stuff.

We had some beautiful weather in October. One day we hit Great Falls Park for a picnic and some hiking. We had a great time and Noah got some much needed attention. Samantha was just done by the end of the day. :-)

The end of October brought birthday mania. Hailey turned 8 and Samantha turned 3! I brought cupcakes into school for Hailey's class for snack one day, then we had the family birthday party for both Hailey & Samantha. Everyone came! Grandma Joyce, Emme, Nono and Great Nani, Grandpa and Grandma Ann, Paula, Neil (can you believe it? He came!!), Ian & Gavin, and Elaine. What Fun!!! Samantha requested a spider cake (she started requesting it two months in advance of her birthday!) and that is what she got. In additon to the family party, Hailey wanted to have her birthday party on Halloween, invite some friends over for a party, trick-or-treating and one lucky friend got to sleep over. Boy was it fun!

GOOD NIGHT!

I'm not sure what is going on with the picutres, but they are not posting where I want them, and of course I can't post ALL of the pictures here anyway. I will work on uploading them into albums and then inserting the links. However I wanted to throw some stuff up here for everyone!

Note To Self

When baking bread one must always turn on the oven and not just the oven light! Duhhhh!

I decided to try and bake the bread anyway, I kneaded it again and then waited to see if it would rise a second time. It did, sort of. So I put it in the oven anyway. It came out about 1 1/2 inches high, but still tasting like good bread and not a brick. I'm calling it a success. Hailey saw the bread, and bless her heart, did not notice that it was flat as a pancake. She scarfed it down with gusto and once again pronounced me a GREAT baker "You're going to a bakery woman! Did you hear me? A BAKERY!" Goodness I love that kid!

Oh My Goodness, I forgot Jamaica!

So I totally forgot to post pictures of the AWESOME trip I took to Jamaica with Laura. Laura and I celebrated her birthday with a long weekend in Jamaica without our families! Can you say LOVELY? It was so nice, we did just about nothing, it was great. Read books on the beach, drank lots of fruity "specials," did some paddle boating, watched "Superman" lead the aerobics classes on the beach (really, he had the necklace and belt buckle to prove it)...nice. The highlight of the trip was the sunset cruise to Ricks Cafe and my jump off the 40 foot cliff. That rocked! Of course, there are no pictures of me jumping, only of the cliff, but as Laura is my witness, I did jump. So I bruised the bottoms of my feet, but other than that I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Well, maybe not a heartbeat but it was fun!

Of course the Jamaica pictures are not on the laptop so you will have to wait until tomorrow (or some other day) for me to upload them from the desk top.

The important point...Jamaica was GREAT! We are going to go back to celebrate my birthday. I'm not sure Bill knows about this plan yet...Shhhhhhh!

Where'd We Go?

Clearly I am not so good about keeping this blog up to date! Apparently life keeps me very busy all the time! I have just spent a lot of time trying to figure out the mistakes of my past posts and correct them. I was only marginally successful. I have discovered that some of the links to the pictures don't work so my next task is to figure out why and fix them.

The past year has been full with fun and exciting stuff - the amount of pictures that Bill has taken is truly mind boggling. Keeping up with the girls activities requires a masters in time management. They kept busy with gymnastics, swimming, girl scouts, and play dates. Not to mention all the school sponsored activities they participated in. Summer was filled with visits to and from family (including Grandma's 95th birthday party), swim team, nature camp, girl scout camp, space camp, learning to ride bikes, camping and general hanging out.

School started with Hailey going into 2nd grade and Madeline starting kindergarten! Samantha wants to go to school as well, she packs her little lunch box every day while the big kids are packing their lunches! Samantha goes to "school" when I got to MOPS - who cares if "school" is the childcare provided for my MOPS meetings - it's all in the name! :-)

We are now gearing up for the birthday season. Hailey wants to have a Halloween party this year - complete with everyone going trick-or-treating and she would like to have a few (two) friends sleepover. This will be a first in the Berg household (if you don't count family) and she is very excited! Samantha's birthday is also this month and will be much more low-key, but just as much fun I'm sure.

Here are some shots from the summer that I'm sure you will enjoy! I was not able to get these pictures to open in a new link...I will work on that, in the meantime you will have to hit your back button or open them manually in a new window. Lisa, any hints on how to fix this?!?!

Maddys First Day in Kindergarten

Labor Day Camping Trip

Swimming in August

Learning to Ride

2008-03-30

Ernestines 95th Birthday

Easter 08

Christmas 2007

Hailey is 7!

Wow! Can you believe that Hailey is 7 years old?!?! She had a GREAT party and had lots of fun. She hosted a costume party - everyone looked great! This year she asked her friends to bring a gift to donate to Grace Ministries - a local charity - rather than a gift for herself. This worked out really well (she got to keep the gifts from family) and she will actually drop of her donations next week.

Once I will refresh my memory on how to embed the link to my photo album online I will add the pictures from her party. For tonight however, I have added these two pictures for you! Love, Jules

BIRTHDAY PARTY

My Time Does Fly - REVISED

I'm updating this post with pictures - lots of pictures. I was looking in our online album and we did a LOT of stuff this summer - so here are some highlights.

In May was the Herndon Festival - Auntie Val, Hailey, Maddy & I ran a 5K! I'm serious, and I have the pictures to prove it - click on this link for the proof! We also went to the festival and watched the fireworks with Malcolm and our friends the Malletts - Pierre, Adrienne, Peter & Katie. It was great fun!

Here is a link to Malcolm's big day - he GRADUATED! Way to go MALCOLM!! Click here to see some great big smiles.

Bill's nephew Travis also graduated this year - Way to go TRAVIS!! Click here to see more great big smiles and pictures from our WV visit.

After school let out we went to NC for our family vacation - I have no idea where all our pictures are for this, however we sent them all to Lisa, so check out her blog (link on the right side of the page) and you will see LOTS and LOTS of pictures of the NC trip there.

Here are some shots of our trip to see Grandpa and Grandma Ann in Williamsburg this summer, and some shots from my birthday. Valerie and Cristina came over and brought me cake! :-) I love them!! Also included in this album are random tubby shots...I'm not really sure why, other than they are cute. http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0Abt2bVq2bNWLCKg
TUBBY SHOTS

I started a cake decorating class recently. Malcolm had the dubious honor of receiving a cake from me. I mixed the colors in class and didn't have many options, hence the color scheme of the cake (you might need sun glasses). The cake reads "chronometrophobia" and "Valley Forge Academy." Malcolm made up a song for the girls - chrynometrophobia and simply sings the word over and over again in a voice shockingly similar to Prince. The girls love it - it makes Bill and I laugh. :-) Malcolm is going to Valley Forge Academy and is really loving it there. We are super proud of him. Click here for the color cake...

We took the kids to the Water Mine one day - Val joined us for a super fun, although a bit cold day at the water park... WATER MINE

The end of August was a very sad time for us in the Berg household. Our beloved babysitter Elaine decided it was time to expand her horizons and take on a leadership role in the Young Life organization. She cannot work, go to school AND do outreach to the middle school kids - so she left with our sincere gratitude for the many years of love that she lavished on our girls. We miss her dearly, but know that she is doing GREAT work for the Lord. Click on this link for some pictures of her last day with us. ELANIE

The very next day Paula and I piled all 5 kids (my 3 girls and her 2 boys) into her minivan and headed to NC for a long weekend. I was going to look at communities there - but we were too busy going to the beach! We had a great time. It was wonderful to spend some quality time with Paula and the kids got to re-connect. We even went out on Nono's boat...that's another story, suffice it to say that we all lived and we can tell you about it some other day. Paula and I hope to make a NC trip an annual event. The pictures from this are all still on my video camera and that will be my next project...find camera, upload video, update blog...don't hold your breath. At least I'm honest.

Now we are up to the first day of school!! Hailey is entering into the 1st grade and Maddy is going to a new pre-school. They both LOVE school - YEA! HAILEY'S 1ST DAY OF 1ST GRADE

Here are some shots of the house getting updated and prepped for the market. I don't think anyone is placing bets on when we will be done. :-) Click here to see what we took pictures of so far. We have actually finished painting the front porch, the new garage doors are painted and installed too.

Valley Forge squared off against our Alma Mater George Mason. So Bill and I took the girls to Mason and cheered on - you guessed it - Valley Forge! Malcolm had an outstanding game and Valley Forge won. It was wonderful to see Malcolm again. He got cadet of the month! How exciting! MALCOLM'S FOOTBALL GAME

This brings us current - PHEW! October 20th we piled into the van and headed to Williamsburg for a day visit. Bill's aunts and uncles were visiting his dad so we popped in for a quick hello. It's a shame that his uncles didn't like the kids... VISIT WITH THE BERG UNCLES


UPDATED POST
Ok, Ok - so I haven't posted in what 3 months or so (yes, I just counted on my fingers!). I get lost in life and many, many things fall to the way side. While I am not posting any pictures I thought I would pop on here and just let ya'll know we were still alive!

Summer has been busy...went to NC for a week to visit the family - had a GREAT time. Prob one of the best visits for us. Yea! Kids had supreme fun and Samantha was super cute once she made friends with the ocean. We were able to visit with old friends from high school and even older friends from childhood - it was great to catch up with everyone.

Once home life resumed - I got slammed at work, the kids had a camp to go to (thank goodness) and Bill blew out his back power washing the house. We have all recovered (basically)and have moved on to the next new and exciting thing that life has thrown at us...Mainly that Bill's bank is closing (or selling) the entire Mid-Atlantic region. Fun stuff.

More later...life is calling me again. I'll come with pictures next time! :-)