Riverstock 2010

Get ready for River-stock 2010. Our little local music and arts festival should be bigger this year than ever! New this year: We'll be taking donations to go to the Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis. Proceeds will stay to help those in need in Madison County.

Bring a covered dish and lawn chair. Great entertainment , activities, fun for all ages.

So far, the music line-up includes:
Ricky D. Copeland, Jason Beamer, Dan Daugherty, Martha Baker-Green, Earl "the Red Tornado" Shell, James Maidlow, Henry Connelly, Jeff Hardin, Larry Arnold, Phil Sylvester, Barry Seacat, Rick-bob Barton, Steve Loser & Youthgaurd, Doug Wimer, Mark Jacobson, along with Nick & Tony "Bub" Harless...we be jammin'

Be here this Saturday, Aug 7th. It all gets started at 3pm. Leave me a comment for questions or concerns. Can't wait to see you there!

Welcome to July

Whoa. Long time, no post. We still are without internet at the new house. However, we have been staying plenty busy. For example:

Bim and Hannah moved to Blacksburg, and we took them to a little local NASCAR event to welcome them to the South. They were pleased.

We went backpacking over the 4th of July. It was a pretty good time. We saw no other humans while out in the wilderness. We hiked for three days/two nights. We were really smelly by the time we got home, but it was fun. Would do again.

Ian with his pack.
Lovely Rhododendron bloom.

The creek by our first overnight camp spot.

Neat-o spider web spotted while hiking.

And this past weekend, Ian took me to his company picnic. It was a Luau themed, so naturally they roasted an entire hog and put the entire, intact thing (eyeballs and all) on a table and pulled the meat out of its backside. How very appetizing. I guess I forgot to snap a photo of that. However, I did get photos of Ian playing kickball. His team was the grass skirts, and the opposing team was the coconut bras. Don't they know how to have fun?

Kickball game, perspective from the bleachers. I wore flip flops that day, so I sat out.

You'll be surprised to hear that Ian really enjoyed his grass skirt. Here he is happily modeling it after the end of his kickball game.

We are really enjoying our new house. We recently purchased some outdoor furniture and fire pit to make our backyard a little more inviting. Our big plans this weekend are to go tubing down the New River with Bim and H. I probably won't be bringing a camera due to the "ruining it" risk factor, with all the water and what not. Hope you enjoyed the post! I'll do my best to update in a timely manner.

Washington D.C. and Ice Cream

The International Dairy Foods Association sponsored a trip for those from our department who wished to go a trip to D.C. to serve ice cream at the Capitol Hill Ice Cream Party. I guess this event was the last big hoorah for June being National Dairy Month? I'm not sure about all the details, I all know is I worked for about 2 hours serving ice cream and got a free trip, fancy meals and nice hotel included. The next day we had time to ourselves to explore the city, and explore we did. We were out of the hotel by 8 am to check out the sights, and museums opened at 10. We visited the National Museum of the American Indian, along with the standard Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Reflection Pond, etc. Ok...picture time!

Here is the line for the Ice Cream Party. It was never ending.

My homie Liyun serves ice cream.

Washington Monument

In front of the Lincoln Memorial with the reflection pond to my back.

WWII Memorial

Me and Abe.

Crazy squirrel that attacked Mona.

Inside the American Indian museum.

Family in May

Alright guys, I'm posting from work. Don't tell on me. I've compiled some of the best pictures from both John, Judy and Grammy's visit, as well and Mom, Dad, Kalow and Mandi's. We really loved having everyone come and stay with us. We were able to get out and do some hiking with the Danielson's, as well as catch a movie at the Lyric and do some birthday shopping for Ian (Thanks to Grammy for the kitchenware and to Judy and John for our yet to be purchased outdoor furniture!). The Huff's came to Hokieville in their RV ready to camp. We enjoyed hanging out by the river, sharing some pretty great stories, watching people fish, and Mom and Dad got to take the motorcycle out to the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to visit a winery. Time flies when you are having fun, and we had a lot of fun. Thanks again for visiting, come again soon and stay with us in our new house!

The Danielson Crew in the wooded portion of our hike

A scenic overlook during our hike

Same scenic spot, minus Karleigh plus Ian
Judy coaxing Neit over the stile

Hiking through a field


The Huff clan settled into the camp site

View from the camp site

Group at "The 'chat"

Ian and K with some crazy guy in the background

Scenic view off the Blue Ridge Parkway on the back to Hokieville

We're Moving!

We are moving! I'm not talking about the website. I am talking about us, physically moving all of our stuff out of the apartment and into a house. While this is great news for us, its bad new for Hokieville since we won't have internet for a while. So sit tight, and I'll try to get posts up as frequently as possible. It just may be awhile. I've got a lot of good stuff to post! See you then.

Quick hiking report

So last weekend, Grammy, Judy and John came for a visit. However, this post is not about their visit. This is a catch up post from a few weekends ago. I am slowly trying to get back on schedule with this blog. Hopefully my summer schedule will allow for that to happen. The Grammy/Judy/John visit will certainly be covered on the next post.

So a few weekends ago we celebrated being done with classes and bringing in the summer with a strenuous hike. We went to Dragon's Tooth with Nick and Mona, packed a lunch, hiked to the top, ate said lunch, relaxed and headed back down. It was about 85F that day, but it didn't feel too hot while we were hiking. It was mostly a shaded hike with a lot of mountain side breezes. I did manage to get a sun burn, however, even though I was wearing sun block. Such is life. Here are a few pictures of the highlights of the hike.

The sun peeking over a cliff

Our view from the top while eating our lunch

Happy hiking family
Ian relaxing with Nick and Mona

Alright Hokieville fans, see you next post!

Adventure in Richmond

When last I posted, we were headed to Richmond for the weekend. We were glad to see when we got there that more family than we expected were there for the weekend. The Boston crew was there, along with John, Judy and Grammy, Ian, and me. We got to see Ian's cousin Hadleigh, who is now almost three although we haven't seen her since she was about 6 months old. We also got to see the new baby, Leo. The highlight of the whole trip was when we piled into Ian's volvo to go out to eat downtown, and as we were pulling into the restaurant, the poor volvo died. As soon as it became obvious we were dealing with a broken down car, the bums came out of the woodwork. We had to abandon Ian's car in Richmond overnight (I am sure it made for a lovely shelter for those seeking to get out of the rain that night), but good fortune was ours when it started up the next day. This was a short two day trip but we really had a good time seeing family, and we are looking forward to the next few weekend when family comes to us.

Oh no our car is broken!

Don't worry, the bums are here to fix it. Actually one of the claimed that he used to be a mechanic. And maybe he really was because the next morning, the car started right up.

New baby Leo (I couldn't get a good picture )

Hadleigh at brunch with a coloring book.

Everyone else out at brunch, not expecting a picture.

At a local park watching Hadleigh play.

Hadleigh and her dad riding in a big red truck.