Tobin Family Website

I have to admit that this is my favorite time of year in Virginia.  The temperatures stay in the 70’s by day and 50’s by night.  The humidity is all but gone.  The air is fresh and the skies are clear.  Last weekend we took advantage of a gorgeous weekend and drove to Markham, Virginia, where we went apple picking at Stribling Orchard.  The orchard has been in the Stribling family for almost 200 years and it is a beautiful place set in the mountains roughly 35-minutes from our house. 

We spent some time at the orchard picking apples (mostly Delicious and Macs), and then the kids picked out a couple of pumpkins for halloween.  There were quite a few people there as the weather was just right and the picking season is in full swing.  On the way out, we grabbed a quick bite to eat as they were selling grilled hot dogs and chicken by the main buildings. 

After leaving the orchard, we drove west about another 15-minutes to Front Royal, VA, and briefly stopped by the Skyline Caverns.  Like Luray Caverns, Skyline Caverns is an underground series of caves where there are lots of impressive geological formations.  Although we didn’t take the tour this time (we have done so a couple of times before), we did tour the gift shop and took some pictures of the kids by the fake dinosaur in the park (we have similar pictures from about 5 or 6 years ago).

We left Skyline Caverns and drove a couple of miles into the Shenendoah National Park on the Skyline Drive.  We drove about 4-5 miles in and stopped at Dickey Ridge, where we parked and took in some beautiful views of the Shenendoah Valley.  After getting some pictures, we crossed over the Skyline Drive and took a short 1.2 mile hike along the Fox Hollow Trail.  While hiking along the wooded trail, we came upon a couple of deer.  The first one startled a bit and jumped up, otherwise we would have probably never seen it.  We stopped and once the deer settled a bit, I was able to get about 15 feet or so away from it.  I got a couple of good pictures (see the photo slideshow below, which includes pictures from the Orchard and Dickey Ridge as well).  It ended up being a great family day.  We may head back over to the Shenendoah National Park again today.  I purchased an annual park pass (it only takes 2 visits to break even on the $30 annual pass price). 

This past week, I ordered a new trumpet for Ben as he is now in the school band.  I found a quality trumpet at a reasonable price that is made by the LJ Hutchen company.  I purchased it through Amazon.com as I had a $50 gift card from them from the “picapp” promotion I did with my websites a couple of months ago.  I was amazed that we ordered the trumpet on Monday night and it was delivered on Thursday (even with UPS Ground shipment)!  It is the perfect trumpet for a new band student.  It is well made and has a very nice tone.  Ben has started practicing and I can help him while playing my trumpet with him.

Tags: Family Update

If you frequent theTobins.org, you may have noticed some subtle changes recently.  For starters, I simplified the look and feel a bit by going from two “sidebars” (the column of information on the right side of the page) to a single, wider sidebar.  I thought that the two sidebar approach was a little cluttered, and it didn’t always display correctly on computers with lower video resolutions. 

Secondly, I added paragraph indents to the posts and adjusted the post font to hopefully make it a little easier to read.  Third, you may have noticed that I have added a “Guestbook” of sorts at the top of the sidebar where you can easily leave comments.  The latest comments will be displayed in synopsized form on the sidebar, with the complete list of full comments available at the Guestbook page. 

Lastly, I have added a new Photo Gallery plugin that replaces the old gallery that I used to use.  The new gallery is a Wordpress Plugin coded by Alex Rabe that is entitled NextGEN Gallery.  It is a much simpler approach (in my opinion) than the Gallery2 application that I used to use.  I like how it integrates into Wordpress and provides a nice, simple, aesthetically pleasing display.  You can see it in action by going to the Photo Albums page and selecting an album.  ONce there, you can view photos by thumnail or as a slideshow.  The slideshow has some nice music that I have selected to play in the background.  If you don’t like the music in the slideshow, you can simply turn it off by clicking on the speaker icon inside of the slideshow image.  You can also see it in action on the Tobin Fine Arts page, where I have included an album of Eric’s paintings and another of him painting.  I can also easily insert links to albums right inside of a post, like this:

Eric Tobin at Work

A few candid shots of my brother Eric at work behind the easel. Additional information about Eric is provided below, courtesy of the Visions of Vermont Art Gallery in Jeffersonville, VT, one of many fine galleries in New England featuring his works.

7 Photos

That is about it for website changes.  Nothing too radical, but hopefully a little improvement over the last design.  I still wish that the Genealogy site were better integrated within Wordpress, but I like the application too much too change it! 

Not too much going on in the way of family activity.  The kids have been having a lot of sleepovers with their friends as the new school year approaches.  Most have been held here at the house, although, Delaney did get invited to a sleepover at a friend’s house this past Wednesday.  Tonight, Ben’s friend Mikey is spending the night.  Last weekend it was Mikey and Alex on one night and Delaney’s friend Madi on another night.  It is kind of fun having the extra kids around, as long as they behave.  The biggest issue is trying to get them to go to sleep.  We have been fortunate that the kids have made good friendships here in Virginia after moving up from Florida.  For awhile there, the kids were pretty melancholy about the move. 

This coming week, I will be going through a 4-day retirement course/seminar at Bolling AFB in preparation for my planned retirement next year.  I have been told that this is a “must do” course about a year out so that I can plan appropriately.  I am curious to see what all they cover in the seminar, and it is starting to set in that I will be retiring soon.  I will have 20 years of active service on 15 Oct 2009, and I don’t plan to stay in much beyond that date.  I haven’t decided on an actual date yet, but I am thinking Oct/Nov.  It seems like a long time away yet, but I will have close to 50-days of terminal leave and an additional 20-days of permissive leave that I will be allowed to take.  That accelerates the date by a little over 2-months.  Of course, I still need to determine whether I will transition into a civil service (Government) job, a “beltway bandit” type of support contractor job, a major defense contractor job, or something entirely different.  I am still weighing the pros/cons and will zero in on what I want to pursue within the next 6 months.  Bottom line, by this time next year, I may be pretty well in the final stages of retiring from active duty. 

Karen is planning to work as a substitute teacher again this coming school year at Delaney’s school (Ben is moving up to middle school).  The job she had last year as a teacher’s assistant at another elementary school dried up with their budget.  Although the pay was less to be a teacher’s assistant, Karen enjoyed staying with one class and not being the transient teacher (that kids like to take advantage of).  The beauty of substitute teaching, however, is being able to say no if you have other things going on that day.  From that perspective, it is a lot more flexible.  Based on past experience with the school, she could work almost daily as a sub if she wants.  The demand for subs is high, and there is a paucity of good subs out there.  So, if she wants to work, there is usually no shortage of opportunity!

Finally, the election cycle is starting to enter the final stages.  This morning, Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate.  He is probably as good a candidate as any of the others out there.  I find it funny, however, that when Biden was still a candidate himself he railed on Obama’s utter lack of experience.  I think he made a comment about how the Presidency is not a place for “on the job” training.  He even went so far as to say that McCain was a much better candidate than Obama in terms of experience.  It will be interesting to see how Biden handles questions about prior statements now that he is on the ticket.  I am anxiously waiting to see who John McCain picks as his running mate.  I personally would like to see Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge on the ticket alongside McCain, but it very likely won’t change how I plan to vote. 

Tags: Family Update, Politics, Website Update