Halloween

Happy Halloween! While Lance spent his afternoon working on a haunted walkway, I spent all afternoon and evening in the kitchen--7 hours to be exact. I'm trying a once-a-half-month cooking plan where you cook for one day, freeze everything and then enjoy a cook free 2 weeks. See all the 1 gallon bags? Chicken scampi, pot roast, teryaki burgers and texas lasagna are all in there, plus more. I'm exhausted and have a full day at work tommorrow. It's ok, dinner will be ready to go into the oven when I get home. Lance enjoyed scaring the trick o' treaters. Yesterday we had fun at our ward's trunk or treat. Lance had an amazing doughnut on a string win.


Here's a few pictures of Lance's walkway:

Last Weekend in Review

Time for some catching up. Let's go back to last Saturday... I'll try to post more pics later

Saturday: Renaissance Festival
Lance's parents came out on Thursday. Saturday we all went to the Renaissance Festival. Of course we had lots of fun! This weekend was the last of the year for the Festival and the jousting tournament took it up a notch. The knights were really competing for a championship complete with cash prizes. We were told that knocking someone off their horse was really a difficult and rare thing to do, but that didn't stop the knights from trying. We saw many shattered lances and punishing hits. We also enjoyed watching several of the shows including some comedy, sword swallowing and Shakespeare parody shows. After the Festival we walked around the historic district of Annapolis. Absolutely charming area of the city.

Monday:
While Lance was in school we spent the morning at Ft McHenry, probably my favorite place in Baltimore. After lunch with Lance we went out for a walk in a gorgeous state park. The fall colors are in full bloom out here, breathtaking to see!

Tuesday
We left Lance to his work for the day and took a trip up to Gettysburg, PA. Again, we were in awe at the fall colors all around us. We spent some time in the museum at the Visitor's Center and then used some CDs for an auto tour (thanks again Ben!). Touring the battlefield and listening to the stories is always a touching experience for me. I think Lance's parents enjoyed a wonderful piece of history too.

Today I'm working on catching up on various projects and cleaning the house before I jump back into work tomorrow. Lance and I need to start weeding things out again to get ready for our move. I'm hoping he'll actually get to help us move this time around, the last move was crazy and exhausting.

Gettysburg pics:



Fort McHenry:

Fall Colors

Taking a walk with Mom and Dad Hartung by the river. Enjoying the fall colors and the bubbling water. Saturday we had fun at the Renaissance Festival. This morning we took a quick tour of Ft McHenry. I love where we live, it will be sad to move next year but I'm sure we'll find new adventures in the South.

More Fall Colors

Quick updates

Lance's parents are out here, so we're off to have some more fun adventures. I thought I'd steal a few minutes to post about last weekend. Lance and I took advantage to go to Philadelphia. We just found out that we will be moving early next year and we want to see all the sights before we're gone. We saw Independence Hall, Carpenter's Hall, Franklin Court, Ben Franklin's Grave and a some other historic Philadelphia landmarks. We also ate a yummy cheese steak for lunch. Lance saw an advertisement for haunted penitentiary so in the evening we went to drive by and look at the outside. Well turns out the outside of the place looked awesome, so we were able to buy tickets off the street (they were already sold out for the night before they opened) and we waited for dark. The haunted penitentiary was the best haunted house I've ever been in. I worked really hard to not be scared, but I was so fascinated by the building itself that I was only started a few times. Still, that atmosphere there was amazing, definitely worth it!


Independence Hall.


Independence Hall and Elfreth Alley, the oldest continual residential block in the United States.


The Upper Chamber were the senate was housed in the 1890s. Litterally, it's upstairs. George Washington's pew in Christ Church.


Eastern State Pen. where we went through the haunted house.

We went to the aquarium last night. They have $5 tickets on Friday evenings this month. Lance ended up coming home from work 1.5 hours late, so we had a much shorter evening. In fact, the aquarium had sold out of tickets. Lance talked to the will call sales and was able to get us tickets. We were able to see most of the aquarium except the dolphins and jellyfish; they closed before the rest of the aquarium. We saw a giant sea turtle that the aquarium rescued 10 years ago. She wasn't released back into the wild because her front flipper had to be amputated. The sting ray tank was our favorite. You could view them from above or through windows under the water. We also saw an octopus that had just laid some eggs. They only reproduce once and then die a few months later, so she was in her last few months.

Lightning

Had a great time today with JP, will need to post pics later though as it's getting past bedtime. We had a pretty amazing lightning show and I snagged a few pictures from a video Lance took.

Autumn in the East (2 posts in one!)

Wow, we're having an amazing weekend! Yesterday we spent the afternoon in one of the most beautiful places in the world, in my opinion. Lush forest along with a lazy river make this place stunning. Walking along the paths or climbing through an archway makes me feel like I'm in a postcard. Lance and I took the easy paved trail along the river's edge since I had to work later that day. We took a few detours to follow streams and hike up to a small cascading waterfall. One of the first railway tracks in North America runs through part of the park. Many of the gorgeous stone arch bridges are still standing and used by the railways today. We followed a stream through one of the archways and dropped some leaves in the water to race them. I won, Lance's leaf was too wide which slowed it down.


Lance can almost walk on water! We raced leaves through this arch.


One of the waterfalls we visited. This suspension bridge is over 100 years old.


A wider view of the waterfall. We found this huge wolf spider; if you zoom in on her back you'll see it covered with baby spiders.


snagged this picture from a short video of Lance playing with a snake. ugh.

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Today I somehow convinced Lance that we should get in the Fall spirit by visiting a farm and pumpkin patch. We had planned on visiting Philadelphia, but by the time we were ready to leave it was too late to get tickets to Independence Hall. We've rescheduled that trip and just received the movie 1776 through Netflix, so we'll head over there soon with some songs stuck in our head. In the meantime we found a fun looking farm to visit for the day and pick out some pumpkins.

Autumn on the East Coast is far different than the west. For starters the weather actually changes. The trees are also starting to turn yellow and a few red, though not the vibrant colors found in the true New England area. It seems that any drive we take goes through very scenic areas. The farm we visited was a little ways away from us and again, I felt like we were driving through postcards and story books. We passed several crisp red barns with clean white fences mixed in with ancient but still picturesque farm homes. The farm we visited had lots of activities and attractions to keep us busy all afternoon. We started out with the pedal karts. Unlike California, the farm kept no attendants at every station. I guess they just trust people to take turns. Since little kids aren't particularly good at sharing, Lance and I could only snag one pedal kart. We couldn't race each other but still had a fun time taking turns with it.

Of course the farm had some animals too. I petted a sheep, miniature donkey and miniature horse. The corn maze was fun, at first. We were given a trivia sheet with 10 multiple choice questions. Throughout the maze you were suppose to see a number, read your multiple choice question and answer the question. Each answer would tell you to go left or right the idea being if you knew what music star passed away in 2009 you would pick "B. Michael Jackson (turn right)" and turn right. Well I'm fairly certain that whoever put up the signs did not know their left from their right. Fortunately, we had taken a picture of a map of the maze. When we were finally close enough to the middle tower and could figure out where we were on the map, the map became very helpful. We finished the maze in about 37 minutes, which we were told was fast. Corn mazes are fun for about the first 5 minutes, then it all pretty much looks the same.

Later in the day we watched pig races. I really wanted to see the pig races and since it was later in the day and we were tired we waited about an hour to see them. The only shade was by the arena and it had great people watching views so the wait really turned out to be a great break for us. The pig races were fun. There were pigs. They ran. Go pigs.

After the pigs we took a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch. We picked out a fun pumpkin and a few smaller ones for decoration. We still may need to go to a grocery store for a better carving pumpkin, but I'm glad to finally have some cuter decorations than Lance's tomb stones and Frankenstein. The weekend isn't over yet, but I'm looking forward to a more restful day tomorrow. And maybe making some cookies.


Racing pigs! A wide view of part of the farm.


It's a miniature donkey. A map of the corn maze we went through in 37 minutes.


We both loved playing with the pedal karts.


Lance with his pumpkin. I looked through a lot of pumpkins but finally settled on a smaller orange pumpkin.

Medieval Times

So, very spur of the moment night. Lance was watching the news and saw a commercial for a special deal at Medieval Times. I was working in the kitchen and Lance tells me "hey, they have some half price tickets for Medieval Times, maybe we should go sometime. Me: "okay, lets go tonight." And that's pretty much how it went down.

Unfortunately, we thought that since it was a show we wouldn't be allowed to take pictures. Wrong, very wrong. I guess we'll have to go back and watch it again just so we can take some pictures. In the meantime, here's some thoughts from the show.

Awesome! Our friends joined us for a last minute night of fun. You can tell we have fun and exciting friends because they were willing to be spontaneous too. Before we even walked into the castle, Lance was talking about walking through the dungeon. When I asked him what the dungeon was, he replied by telling me it's a dungeon. Well that clarified everything. In the shop area I saw a sign for this dungeon place and Lance bought us the two dollar tickets to walk through it. Oh my. The dungeon is a small museum of medieval torture devices. As I read the plaques I cringed about the crushing and tearing each device used to perform on people. It seems that each torture device was worst than the one before it. They really used to saw people in half, rip off breasts and drive spikes through people. Great way to start an evening of fun, thanks Lance.

For the show we sat in the Red section. We had no idea what this meant until we were instructed that since we were in the Red section we should cheer for the Red Knight. Good thing they explained that to us. We sat at a long table behind a loud group of students. Sitting behind the students was actually pretty fun; they were really into all the action which made cheering more fun. We bought a little red ribbon banner on a stick to wave around and cheer for our knight. Our friends have a little one year old, Mina, who was more than happy to wave the stick for us. Eventually, the sticks (she took her parents stick too) had to be removed from her, she had way too much enthusiasm for such a small space. Lance may have some some strange bruises to explain to his unit.

As the lights went down in the arena, we could see the candles from all the seating areas. Great way to set the mood. I loved the whole show. The horses were my favorite part. They had some amazing Andalusian horses. The horses are trained to perform several different types of steps. I'm not sure the younger students appreciated the horse dances since many moves were very subtle. Lance couldn't help but notice since I kept grabbing his arm and asking "did you see that?" If you've never seen a dancing Andalusian, hop on over to youtube and put in a search for them. Again, some very subtle steps, but absolutely beautiful.

And then there was killing. Actually, it was only fake killing. We enjoyed watching the knights compete in the jousting and skills competitions. Unfortunately, the Red Knight was the first one to be pretend killed. The evil Green Knight attacked him. Boo. The sword fighting was definitely fun to watch. Some of the sword clashes even produced sparks, very dramatic.

We were able to get a picture of our group:

The times they are a changing

As Kayley is demonstrating in the pictures, we've decided to rearrange our spare rooms yet again. The idea is to keep one mostly empty for two reasons: 1. Our next place will probably be smaller and we don't want to have too much junk 2. We like having a guest room for our family and friends to come visit. Our office room has been the larger of our two spare rooms since we already have too much junk. We've been trying to downsize, but there are too many random objects I just don't know what to do with. For instance, unmarked CDs, undeveloped film canisters, wires and cords that may or may not be important, and the pile of "what-the-heck-is-this" things. We've been slowly checking things out and weeding out clearly unimportant stuff.

Since we've got our parents coming in a few weeks we reevaluated our rooms and decided that two people might fit better in our normal office size room than in our tiny, single size guest room. Time to move things and start weeding out again. As frustrating as total chaos can be, it is very nice to have Lance help a bit with getting rid of things. Up until this point Lance has been very wonderful and helpful with a lot of different chores, unpacking and sorting through things completely excluded. One entire spare closet has been full of clothes that I've been begging him to go through since June. Well, with the switching of the rooms Lance spontaneously decided to dig through about 5 huge bins of our (but mostly his) clothes. He pretty much dumped them on the floor and picked out a few things to get rid of, hung up a few things, and left the rest on the floor. Well it's a start. We've been having a lot more friends over lately, so I'm fairly confident the pile will disappear within a few days.

So, we've moved the office into the tiny room (with the huge pile of clothes strategically placed in the middle of the floor) which leaves the big room open for a workout/guest room. I have a fun little exercise bike and Lance recently found a total body workout machine thingy. Both fold up pretty small for when we have some awesome family visiting. I think I'm pretty happy with this arrangement. Kayley seems to be enjoying all the stuff all over the floor.

On a quick side note, I found a great bread machine recipe.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Bread-Machine-Bread/Detail.aspx
Great basic bread! The only thing I do different is make the dough in the bread machine but cook the bread loaf in the oven 375F for 30 minutes. Adding a spoonful of honey and mixing in some wheat flour is yummy too!


The pictures below show our office room in progress and our finished workout room/guest room

Our "office" ------ Kayley demonstrating the body works 5000, the armchair is a great workout too

Renaissance Festival

Okay, so I'm still behind from posting pics about last month, but I'd better post from today to stay on top of this month. Lance and I went to the Renaissance Festival out here. I was thinking it would be a bunch of tents with people dressed up and selling stuff. Well of course there were plenty of people dressed up and many selling things, but there were no tents. It was like walking through a medieval village, just with slightly better sanitation policies. Over a dozen stages and amphitheaters provided various shows while street performers roamed around the shops. To start our day off right we watched a funny sword swallowing show. Our friends met up with us just after that and we watched a hypnosis show. I'm not sure I'd like to ever be a participant in a hypnosis show, but it was quite entertaining to watch.

My favorite show of the day was the jousting tournament. The four knights competed in a few other riding events, such as knocking a block off while with their sword while riding on their horses. Jousting was the grand finale of the tournament and it was very exciting. The knights really charged at each other and, although no one fell off their horse, several lances were broken. The horses were actually quite eager to charge at each other. One knight had a difficult time keeping the horse from starting too early.

After the jousting and lunch we walked through a museum of the unnatural. It had different fairy tale creatures in a small exhibit space. Maybe a little cheesy but fun to see the head of Medusa (through a mirror of course), the Cyclops's eye and various evil looking elves and gremlins. Lance tried his hand a few of the festival game booths. First he tried the blow darts. As I said earlier, he went for the biggest prize and just barely missed, of course. He also tried the Jacob's ladder. I think the participant is suppose to climb to the top, but throughout the day we did not see one person make it one step up that thing.

Near the end of our visit, we watched a funny Witch Trial. Lance even got to be one of the accusers. The host of the show had a somewhat difficult time trying to get the participants to really get into their parts (which made it even funnier). When he asked accuser 3 to say their line, which was Lance, Lance really put feeling into "she gave me the evil eye. Oh woe is me." The host was so surprised he could barely stay in character. Lance had added the "woe is me" part and the host made everyone put the back of their hand on their forehead and repeat "Oh woe is me." The host commented that he'd been doing these shows for several years and he's never had anyone read their line so well. The audience and I were laughing so hard! At the end of the show when Lance handed back his line the host said Lance should come to his show every day. A great ending to our Renaissance Festival experience and a wonderful day with my favorite person!


Jousting


Welcome to the Renaissance Festival. Costume characters greeted us.


Lance trying to climb Jacob's Ladder. He rolled upside down every time- disqualified!


Beautiful forest setting for the village. Lance trying to win big with a blow gun.


Me and our friends at the jousting tournament. Jousting!


Some of the skill competitions before the joust began.


End of the tournament. And the museum of the unnatural.