WE'RE FAMOUS!!

A little over a year ago, we spent the day in Shenandoah National Park. (See über cute pics of my boys from the blog post about our trip here.) What I didn't talk about in that post, however, was that on our last trail of the day, shortly after I took those pictures of Brandon and Kiddo, we were approached by two men. At first we thought they were going to present some kind of spiritual message, but it turned out that one of them was a writer, looking into a story for Southern Living Magazine about Shenandoah. He wanted to show that the park was accessible to all kinds of people and we were the "family type" he was looking for.

A couple of months later, and only a few days before we left for Germany, we drove back to Shenandoah to meet with a photographer. After an hour or so, we were done having our pictures taken, spent a couple more hours exploring the park, and then drove home to continue packing.

Several months went by and we hadn't heard anything more about the story. I decided to email the writer about it and he wrote back saying that he had been let go by Southern Living, but that he was still going to try to get the story published. We emailed back and forth a few times, I answered questions for him, and he said he'd let me know.

Several more months went by and we were newly arrived back in the United States again. I emailed my new contact at Southern Living to see if the story was dropped or was still going to be published. More emails ensued. Finally, we were given a tentative publication date for the August 2010 issue.

Fast forward to today when Kiddo and I went to storytime at our local library. We happened to walk past the magazine section, so I happened to check their Southern Living magazine to see whether the August issue had arrived yet. It had. And then I saw the headline on the cover: "Shenandoah Mountain Getaways." I turned to the page 28 and there was our picture.

And now we're famous.

Here's a snippet of the article and the picture that went along with it:

http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-east/shenandoah-national-park-hiking-cabins-00417000068257/page2.html

Hot Sauce for Lunch

Kiddo ate hot sauce for the first time.

He liked to dip his corn in it. And then cover his mouth with his hands when it started to burn. And then have a long drink of water from his sippy cup. And then dip more corn in his hot sauce.

I love this kid.

Morning Breath

Kiddo consistently wakes up earlier than either Brandon or Felicia would like to get up. In order for at least one person to get more sleep, and to ensure that, for our downstairs neighbor's sake, Kiddo isn't running around too much that early, one spouse usually gets up with Kiddo and reads to him in his room for about an hour.

Yesterday it was Brandon's turn to get up with Kiddo. After a time, the boys came into our bedroom with some books to wake up Mommy. After shnuggling up together in bed, Felicia started to read to Kiddo. It was a cute moment until Kiddo pushed her face away and said, "Stinky!"

Oops. How bad must it have been in order for a two-year old to complain?

Train Tracks

Brandon was determined to make an awesome train track the other day--even after Kiddo had moved on to playing patty-cake with Mom instead of trains with Dad. Eventually, Kiddo stopped long enough to turn to Brandon and say,

"Stop playing tracks, Daddy!"

A good train track takes a lot of work.

First 3D Movie: Dora and Diego's Adventure

Kiddo started to cry during the last five minutes, but otherwise it was a success. Diego is the man!

It happened.

Yesterday we got our first "you-haven't-updated-your-blog-in-forever-what's-your-deal?" comment.

Ouch. You know? That hurts. We have a loyal reader out there that actually notices whether we post something new to read and we've let that someone down.

I hear ya, reader. I recognize the cuteness of our last post, but blog readers cannot live on cuteness alone. At least not indefinitely. I'll try harder to write new posts about, er, something...very soon.

Because there's a reader out there that cares.

And I don't want to let that reader down.