Well we didn’t get a real vacation this year, and since we live in Hampton Roads and Lisa and I both work in Virginia Beach, we decided to take our vacation after work one Friday evening. We started at the Purple Cow Diner for an early dinner then drove to the waterfront for the rest of our vacation. Little Matt and I got to drive a race car (video game) and rode wet bikes (again, video game), and even played some skee ball. We window shopped for a little while on Atlantic Avenue and again, managed to walk by all the shops selling hermit crabs without buying another one. We walked along the boardwalk for a bit and heard some Kool and the Gang cover band before getting some tasty chocolate at one of the Forbes’ Candy stores. That pretty much concluded our 2008 vacation and we drove back home to Hampton. Overall, a great night out!

That was last weekend. This weekend we spent Friday having a picnic at the Botanical Gardens and this morning, Lisa ran the Rock and Roll half marathon in VB while Little Matt, Maggie Belle and I ate breakfast and cheered her on. She’s a great runner and we are all very proud!

Check out the best selling Christmas toys for 2008 at Atomic Elephant Science and Toy Co.

Just a quick post this morning as I just wanted to upload a few pictures from Mom and the kids’ trip to the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk yesterday. Unfortunately I had to work and missed the trip but we’re planning another trip for my day off next weekend. We’re going to make a picnic out of it and we’ll make sure the kids wear their bathing suits so they can have even more fun in the fountains. That’s all for now. Check out the photo album here.

I know it’s been a while since posting, but I just uploaded three photo albums tonight covering the last three weeks or so. The latest news is that Maggie Belle is almost walking. She’ll take a few steps if she can hold onto one of our hands, but then she gets tired and plops down to crawl again. We did get her a doll stroller that mainly serves as a walking trainer and she’s been enjoying that. She was so proud this first day of walking behind her little stroller. She hasn’t really figured out which is the front and which is the back, but she’s using it nonetheless.

The next photo album is of our trip last weekend to the County Fair in Franklin, VA. It was pouring rain for most of the drive and for the first hour or so there, but it let up some and Little and I got to go on a few of the rides. I guess “few” being key here as there were only a few rides there. I hadn’t been to this county fair in almost 15 years and somehow I remembered it being much bigger. But we did get to see some blue-ribbon chickens, ducks, rabbits, cows and pigs. And not to mention a humongous watermelon. And while we weren’t quite in the mood for funnel cakes, we did have some deep fried mini donuts.

And the last photo album in this post is of Maggie Belle doing what she loves doing more than anything– eating. This should be a nice way to document how much she’s growing if I can post a few chronological pictures every now and then of her sitting in the high chair. A couple of these are from April, and the rest August. I’ll try to post to this album with a little more regularity going forward.

That’s all for now. As usual, you can check out my store’s best selling toys here.