Newspaper fight

Who needs snowballs or piles of leaves? Old newspapers work just as well...

Christmas trees

We came home from Thanksgiving with enough time to set up both of the Christmas trees. As usual, I love telling the boys the stories associated with all of the ornaments. We managed to only break one ornament this year too, which I think is progress!

Take me to the zoo!

We visited the zoo over Thanksgiving break. It was cold but still a lot of fun! I loved watching the boys with Lila, too!

Go Tribe!

We were back in Williamsburg for the weekend for a football game. It was a gorgeous weekend to be in the 'burg. It happened to be the same weekend that James and I started dating sixteen years ago, which made it extra special to be back in town!

In front of Crim Dell...

Not quite 'jumping the wall' :)

Racing in Sunken Gardens:

Wren Building

The Griffin, the Tribe's new mascot. I think I'm actually liking it these days.
[Maybe they'll even bring back the feathers!]

At the game. We won 41-3!

With Blake and Heather...

Ru couldn't quite make it through the whole game...

OBX

We had a great weekend in OBX with Kathy and Tony. James and Tony got to play golf while the boys and I helped Kathy plant her daffodils.

The boys, playing monster trucks in the sand:

In the afternoon, we went to Roanoke Island Festival Park. First, the boys learned about the animals the first colonists might have seen in the area...

Then we went to the Elizabeth II, one of the sips that brought settlers to Roanoke. It was pretty cool to get to climb all over the ship and ask a "real" sailor questions.

Next was the village, where we watched the blacksmith make a nail and the boys tried on some armor. We also saw a few of the other period tools and played a game very similar to bowling!

The last stop was in the museum to learn about the history of Roanoke Island from the Native Americans through the settlers, pirates, Civil War, and today.

Their backyard is newly cleared down to the sand so we had a 3v3 soccer game on Sunday before we left, with Brady, Kathy, and James narrowly defeating Rudy, Tony, and Kelly!