We woke up yesterday morning to exactly what we were supposed to wake up to--1" or 1.5" of snow and ice on the ground. Stephen and I went to Home Depot to get some stuff for the house (it never ends) late in the morning. Stephen loved stomping around in the ice in the parking lot. When we got back home, we played a little bit in the front yard and then I had a brilliant redneck idea: we have a lot of large boxes in the garage from moving and buying furniture, so we could sled down the icy driveway on some cardboard. A redneck sled. Turned out to be pretty fun.
For some reason, Henry wanted to go to bed at 6pm last night. We kept him awake until 8pm so he would have a better chance of sleeping through the night. This is how delirious he was by the end of the night.
Pumpkinville! We had fun. Nice, long hay ride. Moon bounce. Lots of different slides. Little petting zoo. Hay bale maze. And all of this was free after a reasonable admission fee.
Yesterday we headed out to the Bluemont Fair despite cool, rainy conditions. The forecast said it was going to be partly clear skies by 11am, and even though these same forecasters had the current conditions wrong, we just forged ahead. We arrived at 10am to probably the worst rain of the day as we got everything/everyone out of our car and ready to walk around the fair. Henry was completely sheltered from the rain/wind in his stroller and Stephen had a jacket and a hat. I felt kind of foolish as we pushed the stroller through mud to get to the fair entrance, but everything started to clear up within ten minutes. The rain held off enough that your clothes would get dry between the little rain showers. It was pretty good weather, all-in-all and Stephen did a lot of fun stuff. He got an airbrush stenciled "tattoo," he rode a pony, he got balloons, we all got lunch. We were there about three hours and everyone had fun. Here is a video of the second lap of Stephen's pony ride. He held on by himself and seemed to enjoy it.
I am a photographer, musician and stay-at-home father in the Greater Washington D.C. area. I have a wife named Jaime and two sons named Stephen and Henry. I shoot almost exclusively with a Canon 40D and a couple of Canon prime lenses. I own a variety of instruments, and record and produce music in my basement studio / laundry room. I occasionally post songs or snippets of songs on this page--try browsing my music category.
![[pic]](http://blog.evanvalentine.com/media/aboutme2.jpg)
