Veterans Day

In the DC area, we get Veterans Day off. We went to work on Monday, then had the day free on Tuesday. Kinda weird, but I am not complaining. We took the opportunity to explore a National Wildlife Refuge on the Chesapeake, called Eastern Neck, that we had not been to before. It's on an island that is visible from the Bay Bridge, but requires at least 45 minutes of driving beyond the bridge to get there. There was a very nice visitor center in an old hunting lodge, and we hiked a series of short trails. Bright sun was out much of the day, but there was a cold wind. We had some pink "bearpaw" mittens for Calista. We thought she might not like having them on, but she seemed to get a kick out of them.


It was beautiful on Sunday, and we spent some time on the deck and got pictures of Calista with a "9 month" sign. There are more on our Picasa page.

9 months old

Calista turned 9 months this past Tuesday. She has been doing lots of new things and is generally very happy these days. She is crawling around like crazy and exploring distant corners of the room. She has learned to clap, and gets very excited when she sees the cat. She's also eating quite a bit of "solid" food, and can manage to get cherios and other small items into her mouth. She can also pull herself up to standing using the couch, side of the crib, or the sliding glass door.

We enjoyed a rare day off from cross country yesterday, and took advantage of sunny, warm weather to go hiking. We went to Bull Run Mountain Preserve, an area just west from Manassas - the first line of mountains going west from DC in Virginia. There was a nice viewpoint at some rocks were we had lunch. Calista enjoyed riding in the backpack and checking out the sites and sounds.

I put some new pictures of the hike and Calista's recent exploits on Picasa. We still need to get a shot of her holding a "9 month" sign.