Sand, Surf, Sun & a Sweet T-day

For the past two weeks, Mark, Daddy & Mommy have been on vacation down at the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama (better known as the Redneck Riviera!). Part of our annual Pfister Pfamily Thanksgiving Reunion, Mark has been hanging out with his grandparents, uncles, aunt and only Pfister cousin, Mia. It’s been a super sandy sensational time!

Mommy buries Mark in the sand!

Mark snaps a shot of Dad & Mom at Fort Morgan.

Mark, Pop-Pop, Mia & Nana play around in the ocean. Both kids made it out to the sandbar for some wave jumping and boogie boarding!

Queen Mia and King Mark atop a large sand pile which they used for “sand-surfing” and “sand-sledding.”

Mark takes a spare while “sandcastle-bowling!”

Dad & Mark take on Uncle Dave while racing go-karts.

The whole Pfister Pfamily on Thanksgiving Day (l to r): Mia, Aunt Jen, Uncle Brian, Nana, Pop-Pop, Uncle Dave, Mom, Dad & Mark. 

Taking Flight at the Aviation Museum

This weekend, while staying at the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama, the family took flight to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. Home to the famous Blue Angels, it’s one of the largest aviation museums in the world. The museum had over 150 restored aircrafts – it was gigantic! Along with Dad and Mom, Mark was joined by his favorite and only Pfister cousin, Mia (Brian & Jen Pfister’s daughter)!

Mark checks out the restored aircraft on the Flight Line Bus Tour.

Cousin Mia checks out herself in Aunt Jen’s digital camera screen. The 20-minute bus tour wasn’t as interesting as Aunt Jen’s camera and tripod.

Mark & Dad check out the cockpit of a jet fighter.

Mia’s favorite spot in the museum was on the indoor kiddie aircraft carrier playground. She climbed all over it for more than an hour or so. Ahoy Mia!

This museum was humongous and had the kids running around it for hours!

Mia, Mark and Dad check out the cockpit of a real military helicopter.

The Blue Angels at the museum…

The Blue Angels on the beach… three jets perform just for us over the ocean right in front of our beach house… you can’t beat a front door performance!

It was out of this world!

This past weekend, Mark, Dad and Mom traveled all the way down to Huntsville, Alabama to visit the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The stop was along our way to vacay down at Gulf Shores, Alabama for a nice, long Thanksgiving getaway. It was amazing to learn of Huntsville’s role in many of NASA’s top space projects, especially the making of the moon rockets. The museum was filled with lots of real space artifacts, cool hands-on activities and neat space-travel simulations. We visited the Kennedy Space Center a little over 2 years ago, and must say that this was just as fun, educational and exciting as NASA’s launch headquarters in Florida.

Mark stands in front of a model of the Saturn V rocket.

Mark and Dad check out the real deal, Saturn V rocket inside the museum.

Dad and Mark work on science experiments to understand space-related concepts. Mark’s favorite test was the one involving M&Ms!

Mark dons his goggles while we set off mini-rockets outside at Rocket Park. Definitely an awesome experiment – Mark’s second favorite!

Mark takes a pic of Mom & Dad trying out the jet pack together.

Mark & Dad traverse the Mars Mission Climbing Wall. The whole family enjoyed this rock climbing wall and spent a lot of time scaling the various walls.

The center was filled with lots of space-simulated rides like the Space Shot which gives you the feel of a rocket launch. Mom & Dad enjoyed the 2.5 seconds of being shot up into 140 feet of air-space!

For the younger set, Mark got to ride the Kids Cosmos Space Shot in the Kids Energy Depletion Zone Park (love the name of this park). He only rode this ride 10 times until they shut it down. And yes, he did deplete a lot of energy running around in the play structure.

Mark snapped this picture of our weary family as we left for the day. We spent nearly 9 hours at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. We definitely had an “out of this world” experience that was thrilling and educational!

Lost in the Maize!

This weekend, Mark, Mom & Dad enjoyed the very warm weather out at Layman Family Farm’s Corn Maize. Our journey to the “maize” was the third one in three consecutive years. What can we say – we love this place! For the 2009 season the maze featured a likeness of Abraham Lincoln as seen on the US penny in honor of Abe's 200th birthday this year.

Mark and Dad wander around in acres and acres of corn stalks. The maze is divided into two phases since it’s so gigantic. Supposedly the first phase is easier than the second phase yet we got lost plenty of more times in phase one than two.

Dad takes in the view atop the bridge and relaxes a little…

while Mark takes off at running speed on his own!

Mark and Dad land safely at the bottom of the “spine-tingling” mine shaft slide. It’s an underground slide that’s basically a large ridged plastic pipe. Mark loved it!

Besides the maze, the farm was filled with lots of other fun activities like the “Corn Cannon.” Mark also enjoyed the water pump duck races, corn snake mini-maze, and corn crib (like a sandbox but filled with corn kernels which is much messier than sand).

Mark takes over the camera and grabs pics of Dad…

Mom…

and finally himself!

Let’s Vote Then Hike

On this Election Day today, we voted then hiked. Along with Mama Laura and Thomas, Mark and Mom took off to the mountains for some fall hiking. It was an absolutely beautiful day for a hike in the Virginia mountains. Plus the boys hiked the most they have ever done before: 5 miles! And with no carries – a little whining at the end though and lots of breaks. They also hiked up and down a mountain with 400 feet of elevation changes. 

We hiked the Bottom Creek Gorge Preserve located in Montgomery County. The preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy boasts spectacular scenery with the second highest waterfall in Virginia.

We ate lunch at an old barn which was also the place where we found a letterbox. We love letterboxing!

Mark and Thomas hike or should I say run up the trail to try and catch a deer. We say many deer on our hike as well as a salamander, turkey buzzards and a box turtle.

The boys make it to the falls and climb all over the rocks. No sitting still for these wild animals. They climbed rocks, swung on vines and see-sawed on old tree limbs.

The waterfall!

Group photo time!

Happy Halloween!

Within two short days of Mark’s birthday is Halloween! He loves this time of the year – it’s his favorite he tells us because he gets lots of presents and lots of candy!

Mark (big helmeted Clone Trooper Captain Rex) and his friends, Sam (Transformer) and Alex (Clone Trooper Commander Fox) pose for a picture. The boys walked around the playground for their preschool’s Halloween Parade.

Mark and pals (l-r: Thomas, David, Alex and Bryant) “bob” for doughnuts on a string. We had a small Halloween party at our house, where the boys enjoyed catapulting pumpkins, leaf pile jumping and playing “Ghosts in the Graveyard.”

On Halloween day, Mark, Mom and Dad carved our jack-o’-lanterns. Mom helps Mark carve out his gigantic pumpkin grown especially for him by Pop-Pop Pfister. It was a humongous task to carve with lots of pumpkin guts.

The final carving: “Shisk-ka-boo!”

Mark’s jack-o’-lantern lit at night. It was very scary looking!

Mom carved a scaredy-pumpkin who was frightened by invading creepy-crawly spiders.

Dad carved a web with creeping spider.

Clone Trooper Captain Mark ready for a candy-blasting good time! The talking Clone Trooper helmet was a birthday gift from Uncle Brian, Aunt Jen and Mia. He loves it!!

Counting up his candy loot!

And we shall end with the “no more pictures Dad!”

Happy 5th Birthday to Mark!

On Saturday, October 24, Mark celebrated his 5th birthday with a big party! Along with his best buddy, Thomas, they shared a joint birthday party in our backyard. Both boys turned five this month and have celebrated their birthdays together for the past four years. Of course, their theme was Star Wars.

We decked out the pirate tree house for the party.

Aunt Agnes, Granny, Papap, Uncle Lew and Aunt Mary Agnes gathered for the festivities.

The boys battle Daddy Mike with their newspaper light sabers created with Mama Jen’s help.

The kids gather around for the Darth Vader piñata which was whacked down by a light saber.

The boys blow out their candles on the cakes. Mark had a dueling light saber cake while Thomas had a Mustafar volcano cake. The candles were taped to Star Wars figures that were battling on their cakes.

Mark’s birthday week continued with festivities throughout the coming days. Nana and Pop-Pop Pfister came up to visit and celebrate his special day on Tuesday. Then on Thursday, he celebrated turning five with his traditional pumpkin cake.

Since he was born very close to Halloween, he’s known fondly around our house as “our little pumpkin.” In honor of his nickname, we’ve made a pumpkin cake each year since he’s turned one year old.