Plants

Jojo has started planting some veggies and fruits at the back. I think he has lettuce, cauliflower, parsley and strawberries. The tomatoes are still in their small planters. The guy from the nursery said to plant them in 2 weeks. This is only for half of the backyard veggie area. The other we'll fill next week with the tomatoes and we'll buy zucchini squash and peppers to add to that.

Out front are flowers (^_^) We have 3 different roses, a fire sedum, tulips, azalea, leonardo compact doronicum, rominette red bellis and salvia. Jojo planted other flowers too (don't know what they are) and some wild flower seeds as well. Here's hoping they would all bloom and grow strong (^_^)

Virginia Trip - Day 2

Woke up early Tuesday morning, had breakfast at McDonald's, then went to Luray Caverns at 9am. They don't have tour guides anymore (as of a month ago I think). Instead, they give each one a headphone and a controller. I like this audio tour better than having a tour guide coz I can take my time. Before they said that the tour takes about an hour. It tooks us 2 hours just because I want to really take in the sites and take lots of pictures (^_^) There are various posts with 2 sets of numbers on them. These are the numbers that you would input into your controller for the audio tour for that particular location. There are 2 sets of numbers because the one on top is for adults, and the one at the bottom is a children's version of the tour.

Even if Luray Caverns doesn't have Anthodites, it is much much more grand and breathtaking. The formations here are just so ... awesome! They have a mirror lake too like in Skyline Caverns but this one is bigger. They also have a stalacpipe organ which is the world's largest musical instrument because it uses stalactites to play music. And these stalactites are distributed through approximately 3.5 acres of the cavern!

I think the most memorable especially for Finn would be the fried eggs. They do look like fried eggs (^_^) I don't quite remember the history but I think they were stalagmites that broke off and the people before used to rub the remnants for good luck. That's why the "yolk" is shiny. Now it's prohibited to handle any of the formations to protect it.

After the cavern, we went to see the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum beside it. Lots of really cool vintage cars. The last one in the exhibit was worth more than $20,000 ... in 1935!!! Now that's an expensive car.

We were supposed to go Shenandoah National Park afterwards. We did, drove a few miles, but it was so foggy, we had to turn back. It was getting scary ... like we got lost in the twilight zone. Seriously, we couldn't see more than 5 feet away and driving in that condition on a very windy mountain road, it's dangerous. We turned back when the fog got even worse.

So we thought of looking for another park to go to and luckily, Jill (our GPS) showed us one nearby. We had to go through farmland and the back roads and when we got there, we were the only visitors. We didn't stay long coz it started drizzling too. Went back to the hotel before leaving again for dinner.

The next day after packing up, we checked-out and had breakfast at Burger King. We thought of going back to Shenandoah National Park but it was raining and I could see the fog in the mountains. Don't want to drive in the fog again so we just headed back home.

We're thinking of going back there especially to visit the national park. Hopefully in the summer, or fall to see the changing of the leaves.

Did you enjoy the pictures?

Virginia Trip - Day 1

It's Finn's spring break from April 10 - 17, so Jojo and I took the week off as well. We left just after 6am on Monday, April 13, to drive down to Virginia. Our main purpose is to see the Luray Caverns. We were still on the road around noon and was getting hungry so we looked for a place to eat. We saw this sign that said Skyline Caverns and it included "food" so we decided to stop by. Well, their only food were chips and such, not "real" food. But I still had a lot of onigiri in the car that we could eat for lunch so no need to worry. And since we were already there, and the guy said that the tour was about to start, we thought we'd join the Skyline Caverns tour.

This is our first family trip to a cavern so we were in awe of the formations. Touching is prohibited although there was one fallen stalactite that we could touch and you could definitely see the result of years of people handling it - it was colored brown. Fairyland Lake was very interesting. It's a reflection pool so you can see the formations on the ceiling by looking at the water which acted as a mirror. There was also a beautiful formation that they called The Eagle because it did look like an eagle with it's wings spread (^_^)

Aside from these formations, Skyline Caverns had something special called Anthodites. These are only found in a few locations around the world and grows only one inch every 7,000 years! And the biggest one there was 18 inches meaning it took 126,000 years to grow that long! They remind me of sea urchins but they said they are also known as Orchids of the Mineral Kingdom. Don't really see the resemblance to an orchid though ... do you?

We were able to descend up to 240 feet and the tour lasted about an hour. After the tour, we drove to the hotel, checked-in, ate onigiri and went to The Garden Maze. This is our 2nd maze, the 1st one being the Pineapple maze in Hawaii. They had something in common - both had goals you had to find in the maze. We were given a mission card that needed to be stamped whenever we find a goal. There were 4 in total and when you find all of them, you get a discount on certain items at the gift shop. It makes going through the maze much more fun (^_^) Of course we found all of the goals but we didn't buy any of the discounted items ... hehehe.

The maze is located beside Luray Caverns and we could have gone to see it then, but we left the videocam at the hotel. It was fine since I planned on going there on Tuesday anyway. We went to the gift shop by the cavern anyway, bought souvenirs and fudge (mmmm). Then we went to the Singing Tower to take pictures. It's a carillon of 47 bells but unfortunately, it only perfoms on weekends so we didn't get to hear it.

Then it started drizzling so we went back to our hotel before heading out for dinner. Good thing we decided to eat dinner early coz restaurants there close at 8pm. Shops close at 6pm. We ate at Artisan's Grill and was it good! I had the Bacon and Bleu Beef Tenderloin (so yummy!!!). Really, if you ever find yourself in Luray, this is the place to eat. They're closed on Tuesdays so we had to eat somewhere else the next day. But that's for another post. Right now, enjoy the photos of our first day (^_^)

Fair 09

Every April, for 2 weekends, there is a fair in Kearny that we go to. They don't always have the same rides but there's always the ferris wheel and the carousel.

Last night, we got there after 6pm. Finn and I rode the ferris wheel and the bumper cars. He drove even though it was hard for him to reach the steering wheel because of the harness (^_^) He rode the dragon coaster twice and he tried the gravitron by himself. He really enjoyed that one coz he likes spinning. The girls who went on that ride didn't look too happy when they came out ... hehehe. Finn also tried his luck at shooting baskets coz there was this big watergun that he wanted to get. He even used his own money to play but unfortunately, he didn't win. After walking around a bit, we bought cotton candy and a candy apple to bring home. Then we went to the diner for dinner. Jojo had an omelette, Finn and I shared a waffle. Yup, breakfast for dinner (^_^) Good way to end the day don't you think?

Frosting

My weekend project started Friday morning when I frosted the bathroom window. It faces the neighbor's house and if somebody's looking out from their upstairs window, they can definitely see our bathroom. It has blinds but we want to keep it open to let the light in so I thought of frosting the bottom window.

Saturday morning was spent frosting the front door and one living room window that faces the street. In the afternoon, I started doing Finn's 2 windows that faces the street so that it looks uniform when you're looking at the front of the house.

Before, the front storm door was all glass. I didn't want to open the main door even if it will let the natural light in coz then everybody can see inside the house. But I didn't fully frost it either so that we can still see out but at least the view from the outside is partially obscured. The 3 windows were done the same way, they're not fully frosted. What do you think?

UPDATE: I added photos I took last night to show the view from the outside. Finn was already asleep so I couldn't take pics of his windows but the effect should look like the living room window.