I refuse to be stuck in the house all day just because it's cold, so Sabrina and I have been making good use of her full winter gear to take some walks together. Thank goodness for warm clothing! This last picture, well, just fun as usual around our house. Looks like she's ready to show you to your seat at the local movie theater :) 
ertainment!
Well I must admit that fall out here in Virginie sure is perty. This is the view from our patio. I miss San Diego County an awful lot, but this time of year is really nice here. Not too cold, no snow yet, and beautiful trees all over. 
We went to an Apple Festival this weekend and had a lot of fun. It was about twenty miles out of town, and it is amazing how quick it turns into real country folk when you leave Charlottesville. (Professor Choi, my contracts professor, told me that he drove about twenty miles out once and when he went into a store the guy working there walked up to him and asked if he knew Kung Fu.) We really had fun. There was a guy playing a banjo and singing fun songs like "Turkey in the Straw." 
I actually had never heard that song before and I thought it was so fun that at certain parts the whole crowd would chime in and sing along. I don't think my hometown has any folk songs that everybody knows, except maybe "Because I Got High" by Afroman. Later on, some more people came and joined him in music and merriment making.
There was an old lady there selling jars of stuff she had made herself. We asked about her pickled peaches and she looked at us and said, "You're not from the South are you?" So we bought a jar to further our assimilation. We'll let you know how they taste. They were also stirring up big batches of apple butter there. Yummy.
Finally, we wanted to show you that Sabrina has started responding to "smile" requests when we take pictures. Okay it only worked one time, but it was cute. Hopefully she'll keep it up.
I realized that the posts I just put up didn't have enough Sabrina, so I figured that before I get angry e-mails, I better put up some more pictures of our little darling daughter. First, she has taken to to playing with our pots and pans a lot, including trying to climb into them. It's cute, but noisy.
Normally we cut up fruit and veggies into smaller pieces that Sabrina only has to take a few bites from, rather than give her a whole fruit or vegetable, but Yogurl went ahead and peeled an apple and gave it to her at the table. She loved it! She was sitting there humming a happy tune and just chomping away at the apple. I tried to give her her sippy cup to drink some water, but she refused to let go of the apple to give herself a drink, so I had to assist her. 
It got kinda messy, and she got tired of it when there was a fair amount of apple left, but it kept her happy and busy for a while.
As you can see here, she got into my pajamas and found a pretty blue scarf for herself.
Those of you who know Yogurl won't be shocked to learn that she insisted we go to the Chocolate Festival yesterday. You might be surprised to learn, however, that she also wanted to go eat at a place called The Downtown Hotdog Company. They had all sorts of crazy hotdogs. 
I got the Rise and Shine--a polish sausage with egg, bacon and cheese. Yummy! Yogurl had The Chicago, a vienna beef hotdog with mustard, neon relish, onion, pickle spears, tomato wedges, hot peppers and celery salt on a poppy seed bun. They were so good that Yogurl said she would like to go back some time! That's really saying something. The chocolate festival was good too, by the way. It was a bunch of church/charity groups selling baked goods, mostly chocolate, to raise money. 
Since it was for a good cause, we had to buy some. The highlights where the chocolate chess pie and the flourless chocolate cake. The homemade hostess style cupcake was also delicious. Way better than Hostess cupcakes. What healthy eaters we are!
Well, my dad told me that at some point we had to go visit Colonial Williamsburg. 
I thought it sounded okay, so we decided we would go check it out during fall break. 
It was way cooler than I could have hoped. By the end of our trip I was trying to figure out how I could convince them to hire me as a lawyer in the courthouse. What a cool place! As you walk across the bridge that leads to the historical area, it has plaques that guide you back through history. 
I took a picture of my favorite one. 
We saw all sorts of stuff while we were there. What is so cool is that the town actually functions like an old town (mostly). They build with bricks made at the brickyard, they use barrels made by the coopers, the townspeople wear shoes made by the cobbler who uses tools made by the smiths.
How fun! I got to use the tool they had at the gunsmith's place to rifle barrels. I thought rifles would be rare back then, but apparently they were't that uncommon because people needed them for hunting big game.
I also included a picture of the cabinet makers shop for my dad. 
The cabinets there were so nice, but the guy there told me they took about 500 man hours to make using the old tools, so you can understand why we buy crappy stuff from Wal-Mart instead.
Jamestown, though not nearly as cool as Williamsburg, was still pretty cool. They had reconstructed what the original fort at Jamestown looked like, though it isn't in the original location. I guess they thought Jamestown had been washed away, but in 1996 they found where it was exactly and now they are busy doing archeological stuff over there. 
Anyway, they had lots of activities, like firing a musket, and showing how they made canoes.
There was also a recreated Indian village, though that is apparently mostly guesswork, since they don't have as much written record of their society, and what they do have mostly comes from the early Jamestown settlers. They also had three ships there to show what the ships the settlers came on were like. 
The lower decks were plenty small, as you can see. We had lots of fun exploring Jamestown!
While we were staying in Williamsburg, we took a trip down to Fort Monroe to visit the Casemate Museum. It was pretty cool. 
This picture is a picture of me and Sabrina in the casemate where they held Jefferson Davis prisoner. The big flag at the side apparently is the actual flag they put up in his cell while he was a prisoner to remind him that he lost. It was a pretty cool museum.
She really enjoyed climbing around the furniture of a new place, as you can see.
