Photos from our 4th of July weekend! We started it out by trying Duck Donuts for the first time (since they recently opened their Fairfax location), had a BBQ with my parents’ family friends, and ended with fireworks on Sunday night!
Fireworks on Sunday night…
This summer, in addition to ballet class and gymnastics class, I enrolled Mio in a program called Variety Zone, in which she can sample a little bit of each of the children’s programs offered in the county. In this class, the children rotate through different programs, experiencing two days each of Preschool Picassos, Gym Jam, Magic Kitchen, Wild about the Wild and Adventures in Gardening, over the course of eight weeks (one day a week).
Here are some photos and videos I took of Mio at the classes over the past couple months.
A video of Mio shaking the whipped cream, chopping up the fruits, and eating the completed snack.
Making marshmallow spiders!
Making girl and boy cookies out of crumbled graham crackers, cheese, pretzels, and raisins.
The program was a really fun way for Mio to sample a variety of fun activities over the summer, and she was always excited every week to go to the class! (I think she had more fun with it than gymnastics and ballet.) I really recommend it as a nice way to keep the kids occupied, especially during the summer when they’re out of school.
A bonus video of Mio from one of her last ballet classes:
Here are some photos from Fourth of July weekend! We spent it quietly at home, but Dan’s sister came down to visit from New York, and Ted & Elisa also came over so we had a lot of great family time together.
Here is Mirei on all fours, bouncing and rocking back and forth. She’s definitely getting ready to crawl!
Dan’s sister Hyo took some great photos of the girls too, so I’ll go ahead and share them here as well.
Hope everyone had a great Independence Day and holiday weekend! 😀
Since making the move to Virginia, I’ve been looking forward to going on trips and vacations together again with my family. When my siblings and I were kids, our parents would always take us to the Shenandoah Valley a few times a year, so much that we grew sick of going in our teenage years. But after spending a decade away from home, I actually came to miss going there with my parents and that time that we could spend together as a family. As I’ve grown older, I have a new appreciation for family trips (especially now that I have my own child), and it’s also probably due to the realization that such opportunities will become more and more rare as we all get older, have our own families, get busy with more of our own obligations, and our parents eventually won’t be as able-bodied anymore. It’s important to take these opportunities while we can, as well as appreciate and treasure these moments that we’ll eventually look back on as fond memories.
That’s why Dan and I were totally on board when my father suggested we take a family trip to West Virginia during the week of July 4th. We booked rooms at Breath of Heaven Bed & Breakfast in Petersburg, nestled along the Monongahela National Forest and Appalachian Mountains. My brother Ted and Elisa couldn’t come because they were on their honeymoon trip, but it was nice that most of our family could join in this peaceful getaway up in the mountains.
We spent a lot of Wednesday, July 3 traveling to our destination, and upon arriving were greeted by incredibly warm and sweet hosts Geri and Ed, and the quiet, beautiful landscape of mountains and valleys rich with trees. The bed & breakfast was lovely, and there were always homemade cookies and tea on hand and available for guests to eat.
Here’s a video of the view of the countryside from the balcony of the main building.
Dan, Mio, and I got our own little cabin/cottage (the owners called it a”cabbage” as a combination of the two) away from the main house. It was so cozy and nice!
We spent a lot of July 4th hiking in nearby Dolly Sods. My family did a total of three hikes. I had to sit out on the longest one and rest in the car because I’m still pretty queasy and don’t have a lot of energy due to pregnancy.
In the afternoon, we headed back to the bed & breakfast to rest and freshen up a little bit, and then in the evening went out for dinner and to watch the fireworks show in Petersburg. It was actually a pretty impressive 30-minute long show of fireworks! I think this is Mio’s first time seeing such large fireworks, but she wasn’t scared at all and kept saying “pika pika” (the Japanese word for “sparkly” or “shiny”) and “Wow!” Here’s an Instagram video I took!
The following morning, we were treated to another delicious breakfast by Geri. I think the breakfasts at Breath of Heaven are definitely one of the biggest highlights of the place. Geri is such a great cook!
Before heading home, we stopped by a couple more scenic spots in West Virginia. The first was Blackwater Falls, which I’d been to before back in the summer of 2007, right before I moved to California.
Our final stop was Lindy Point, which was a bit of a tiring trek for my pregnant self, but presented some beautiful views.
I think we all felt refreshed from spending a few days in the tranquil countryside of West Virginia, getting away from the busy-ness of Northern Virginia and cutting off from technology — we didn’t have phone reception nor WiFi for most of our trip, so it forced us to power down and enjoy our surroundings, which was a good thing. While the scenery there is different from the grandiose spectacles of Yosemite and Big Sur back on the West Coast, it definitely has its own beauty. (No wonder John Denver goes on and on about it in “Country Roads,” his ode to the state!) West Virginia tends to get a bad rap, and while I confess to on occasion having poked fun at the neighbor state myself, I think there’s much to be appreciated in this wonderland of mountains, rivers and trees. We’ll definitely be back!