SAP Summer Picnic

This year we drove again to Newtown Square for the SAP summer party. Unfortunately it was raining on and off the whole day. Mia had still fun though with all the fair food and some of attractions. She liked a house where children could climb and wanted to try the rock climbing together with Kross

 Later we met Christoph and his family and the children played inside with a revolving chair

The conclusion of the summer party was a big fire works. Different from last year Mia was not scared by the sound

Luray Caverns

We had planned to check out the natural bridge park south of Lexington, Va but because of the rain we decided to drive back home and stop at Luray caverns.

 The pool of water looked liked a mirror

 After some time we put on some jackets

Virginia Safari Park

Just 10 minuted away from Lexington, Va is the Virginia Safari park where we could see many animals directly from the car while driving through the park

Mia could watch through the moon roof

Some of the animals were a bit greedy with the foof

 It was not allowed to feed the bison but he checked anyway

 When it started to rain we had to wait in the car a bit and tried some mirror covers in the German colors we had brought for the FIFA world cup a hats

After the rain stopped we checked out the other animals in the zoo like safari village

A weekend trip to Lexington, Va

To get away from the city for a long weekend we headed to the mountains in the southwest of Virginia. The small town of Lexington, Va had a bit of history, a bit of southern atmosphere and quite a few things to check out.
Our first stop was the Virginia Horse centers were we watched a barrel horse competition

 After watching the riding for some time where even a 1/100 of a second counted Mia checked out the stables and petted some horses

 Then we checked in in our hotel that was in an old manor house not to far from the historic center

 The evening concluded with a pizza at the porch of a little pizza parlor

 On the next morning right after breakfast we waited for the horse carriage tour. Mia had brought her teddy along

Mia didn't care too much about all the history we learned about at the one hour tour but she liked the remote control that allowed to turn a traffic light green for th ecarriage

A weekend with the Cousins

After a long break since Easter we finally managed to meet with Yilei's family again and stay a weekend at their place in Clarksburg, Md.
We stsrted with some blackberry picking at Butler's orchard

Then Mia and Ben checked out the slides

Luckily there was a place to cool off

Back at Yilei's place the three cousins spent the evening with a baby sitter from next door and the parents went to a Sushi restaurant.
On Sunday morning we went to a splash park - which was lots of fun

 Then we went to lunch to a Korean place

 And Sunday afternoon we spent a pool

The weekend ended just as it started - with black berries. Yilei made a black berry cobbler with the ones we had picked the day before and it was great with ice cream

4H Festival at Frying Pan Farm

Luckily Ji had spotted a sign for the 4H Farm Festival at the Frying Pan farm. Mai always wants to go back there and this was a good opportunity to do so. Also because it was a relatively cool and cloudy day.
Our first stop was the horse and pony riding ring. For Mia it was the first ride on a horse - before it had only been ponies.

There were many other animals to see and shows with sheep and dogs

 There was also a  fair ground with most of the rides we also know from the Arlington county fair

 Mia also liked the fire trucks and ambulance on display

At the end she could milk a cow

and grind some corn