Oakton Businesses Celebrate Their First Years

and celebrated their first anniversaries over the weekend, offering robot-building, discounts and balloon animals to children who visited Hunter Mill Plaza over the weekend.

Tabby Cat opened last year with owner Alex Craige So far, so good.

She said she has regular customers who come through her children's clothing store, and people are becoming more aware of the store. She listened to customer feedback and expanded the size range for girls to 12.

Overall, she's pleased with how well the store has done considering all the different weather phenomena of the last year.

"Oakton's a great area for a new business," Craige said. "There's a lot of people here, a lot of kids and a hometown feel."

Ryan Heitz, who owns ideaventions with his wife, said the science center is doing well, and will be .

In the falls sessions that kick off today, sessions will include biology workshops — with cow eye dissection to learn about the eye and optics — Xbox video game programming, Star Wars and Harry Potter robotics, building water rocket launchers to learn the physics of rockets, and making interactive LED lamps using Arduino — a programmable microcontroller to learn about design and computer science.