7 Quick Takes, Volume 50

--1--

As summer is winding down my life is getting busier, it seems. I'm spending less time online (yay me), but I've still managed to post a few things here and there.  Over on Cooking Nick's Books this week I posted a wonderful ratatouille recipe--a perfect quick weeknight summer dish.  And last Friday I posted my "7 Quick Takes" on that blog as well.  I hope you'll check those out!  (My ratatouille post only has ten hits.  Pathetic.  You don't know what you're missing! *smile*)

--2--

Last week Moe attended his annual day camp at the nearby reservoir, where the kids go hiking and canoeing, learn to build fires and bake cakes in Dutch ovens, discover animal tracks and identify trees.  The lake has a new resident this year; the kids named him Steve.  Just don't get too close to him or he'll hiss at you like a banshee.  (Actually, I don't know whether or not a banshee would hiss.  But it sounds cool.)

(Not bad for a photo taken from my phone...)

--3--

Last Saturday Larry took his Black Belt test in taekwondo.  He wasn't nervous until the day before the test.  His instructors and Taekwondo Master were confident that he would do well, and he did.  He won't get his actual belt until the fall, possibly as late as October.  We are so proud of him!

--4--

I took the boys to my parents' house near Blacksburg for a couple of days this week.  I wish I could spend more time with them.  Whenever we visit them I always looking at the pretty little gardens Mom and her neighbors plant and maintain around the springs behind their homes.  You always see lots of animals around, especially birds and rabbits, and when it gets dark Curly likes to stand on their back deck and watch for the deer that always visit.

 (another phone pic.  This one of the pump and bridge turned out better than the one I took with my "real" camera.)

--5--

Curly and I went out on Wednesday afternoon to a park in Christiansburg to explore and look for some geocaches.

We found this one near one of the picnic shelters,

And then set out on a quest for another.

We finally found it not far from where Curly is standing.

We returned slightly hot and thirsty, but it was worth it.  We don't do that as often as I would like.

--6--

When I was a kid, there was one movie theater in town, the Lyric.  When it was built it served as a venue for movies as well as stage shows.  It was quite a fancy place in its heyday.  By the time I came along it was pretty run-down.  Sometime in the 1970s another movie theater was built, then another, and then in the late 1980s the mall went up with a new-fangled multiplex.  For a while the Lyric was closed.  Recently it was renovated, and the dusty brown curtains on the walls were removed, the worn (stained) upholstery on the seats was replaced, and the theater was restored to its former glory.  We patronized the Lyric on Wednesday Night for the movie Madagascar 3; which, thankfully, was much better than I expected.  Very cute. I ventured a photo with my phone from the balcony, but it doesn't do the place justice.  But do you know what?  It's smaller than I remember.  Funny, that.

A lot of memories are here.  Star Wars (you know, the one they call Episode IV, A New Hope nowadays). Freaky Friday.  The one with Jodie Foster, not that crazy Lindsay Lohan.  The Apple Dumpling Gang.  (How many of y'all remember THAT one?  And no Googling.)  It was nice to get a taste of the way going to the movies used to be.

--7--

I had another take in mind, but I'm exhausted because we just returned from seeing this band in concert:

I'll save my rants about people who hate Chick-Fil-A for another post.  And I'll post some photos and tell you all about the fantastic show we saw tonight.  (I don't know...it might even have been better than the Gavin DeGraw concert...I'll study on that awhile and let you know.)  And I have a 6 am appointment with Jesus, the Blessed Sacrament.

Have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to check out Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!!

Get Thee to the Woods: A Couple of Blacksburg Parks

On Holy Saturday while visiting my parents for Easter, Joe and I were anxious to get the kids out of the house for a while. They all wanted to go to see the Hunger Games movie; I thought we should do something more physical than that, like a hike. I prevailed, and a hike it would be.

My mother suggested a relatively new park on the western side of Blacksburg, Heritage Community Park. It's so new it isn't on Google maps, but we found it easily.

A network of trails lead past ponds, through meadows, and an old farmstead.

Tom's Creek.

The park was once the Brown Farm, although I don't have any idea who the Browns were or how long ago they lived here.

Nearby is Gateway Trail, which leads into the Jefferson National Forest.

We greatly offended a couple of chickadees, apparently; they scolded and fussed at us loudly as we passed.

When we began to climb, I wondered briefly if maybe we shouldn't have gone to the movies instead.

There were a few muddy spots like this, but not many.

See this rock? Moe picked it up and tried to heft it over this fallen tree. It fell short and landed on the tree instead, and stayed there. The log bounced up and down from the weight of the rock, but still the rock stayed. We were pretty impressed.

We hiked to the top of a ridge, where there was a teensy bit of a view. The trail kept going up, and there are many more that branch off into the forest. We vowed that on a future visit we'd take a day and hike more of these trails.

A couple of years ago when I started this Get Thee To the Woods theme, it was in response to a blog challenge to get your family outside together. I haven't posted under that tag much lately. It isn't that we haven't been going outside; I just haven't documented it as much. (Well, actually, I have; I just haven't posted it under the outdoors theme). Anyhow, this Lent has given me the chance to re-evaluate my place in the social networking world; giving up Facebook and Twitter (mostly) was hard at first, but I realized after visiting those pages again that truthfully I haven't missed all that much. I'm happy to be able to connect with family and friends again this way (and it's FUN, let's just admit it right now), but I'm thinking I probably wont spend as much time on those sites as I used to. At least not for a while.

We're on spring break. We're doing some housecleaning (which means it's time for me to wrap this up here and get out of my pajamas and tell the kids to turn off the TV so I can give them their chore lists) and swapping winter clothes for spring ones, and I'm hoping to drag the kids to at least one natural and/or historic site in our area. Wish me luck. And hopefully I'll get my behind out of bed early enough to go to daily Mass at least one day this week.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, and Happy Spring!