It's Feast or Famine

It's feast now and famine later, I'm sure. Enjoy it while you can, Mom! :)

These are our awesome friends who took us in for the weekend at Williamsburg. As grandparents themselves, they are fully equipped to deal with children in their home. They have macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, movies (with popcorn), toys, and scooters down in their unfinished basement where the kids can do laps. Can you say no stress for the mama? Not to mention that Lanning roasts his own coffee beans over the grill, so he produces some lovely brew in the morning. They both have a way with kids, and my kids were no exception...they did NOT want to leave. :) I think that might have had something to do with the fact that Cyndi let them eat as many pancakes as their little hearts desired. They kept looking at me like, "Are you going to make her stop? Because if you're not, I'm just gonna keep eating." The girls were chatting here with Cyndi. We just met with Cyndi yesterday at Starbucks here in Charlottesville, and they were so delighted to see her again!
Nathaniel tried his hand at their (three-wheeled) scooter, and then decided he knew how to ride a real scooter when he got home. And, in fact, he did! He now tools around the driveway on his scooter. What a big boy!

Shiloh also likes the scooter and can do several tricks on it. I'm not letting her ride on the handlebars, though. :)
Lanning and Jackson developed a great relationship. :)

Here are the boys asking ENDLESS questions about the whole grilling process. They compared his grill to Daddy's (Lanning's was deemed much better - and shinier) and then asked all about the knobs, the doors, the utensils, what he put on the meat, how hot he made it, etc. etc. It must have been exhausting, but Lanning put up with it all. Oh, and Lanning wore a muscle shirt that day because Jackson told him he was going to wear one, and could Lanning please wear one, too. So he did. :)
Here we are exploring a park adjacent to the James River. What an awesome day we had!

The kids are trying to skip rocks. Cora got a pretty good skipper and it went four or five times.

We discovered a "sneaky trail" that led to the James River!! We were all surprised when it came out to a sandy beach with a bench next to it. I could not resist the pleas of "Mommy, please can we put our feet in?? Please?? Please??"
What do you mean, you only said to put our feet in? Can you see how far up the water goes on him??? He was soaked, and had to sit in his skivvies for the ride home.

What an unexpected gem. I wish I had known about it, and I could have prepared better...like bringing a towel or something!

One of these kids is not like the others...one of these kids doesn't want to go home...

Abigail was NOT pleased when I said it was time to come out. She loves loves loves water and could have stayed there all day. I can't believe all of them are such water babies (kids).

Williamsburg

Everyone is ready for a fun day! Williamsburg is awesome - and smart - for choosing to reach out to homeschoolers like they do. The tickets were heavily discounted, and the place was PACKED. It's smart financially, because they get tons of kids to come to the park when they would normally have slower weeks. It works out for me, too, which I really appreciate of them. :)
Everyone gets to meet one of the horses upon arriving.
This was probably the highlight of Adah's whole day. She is SUCH a girly girl, and she studied these ladies with intensity. She later told me all about the bows and various items of clothing they had on. When we would see them around the streets later, she wanted to follow them. Basically, we stalked them until she could get another picture. They were very gracious.
The stalking worked! The girls were able to chat with them and actually touch their dresses. Jackson rolled his eyes and tried to pretend he wasn't there.

I made the mistake of letting Shiloh have the camera at one point. When I downloaded the pictures, there were no fewer than FIFTEEN pictures of horses pulling carriages. :)
Here are my lovely girls in the governor's palace garden.
This is just a side view of the governor's palace. I didn't get great pictures of the buildings, which is a bummer. On the plus side, we got to see the inside of the bathrooms at the governor's palace twice since Nathaniel had to use the bathroom SIX times while at Williamsburg. We did a lot of backtracking throughout the day. We definitely need to go back next year to see more and to take Daniel with us.
The girls waited to see who would come out of this carriage. They thought it would be royalty, I guess. :)
Shiloh loved this cloak. "It could be Felicity's cloak, Mommy!"
Ahh, yes. The stocks. The boys are making "sad" faces because they are being punished for their crimes.
Abigail doesn't seem repentant. :)

Adah is repentant - or just mad, maybe.

Now she's happy!

Jackson could barely reach and kept saying, "These things must have hurt their necks!" Um, yeah. That was sort of the point.

Cora was a good sport and stuck her head in, too. Shiloh wouldn't do it - stinker.

Adah's great sense of humor comes through.
The Parish Church at Bruton Street. It's still an active congregation. The kids thought it was pretty fancy, and Jackson wondered if our congregation could find a church like this to meet in. :)
Adah was thrilled to discover this placard on one of the pews. She was telling everyone around us.
The only thing I absolutely had on the agenda for the day was seeing the Fife and Drum Corps march to the Governor's Palace Lawn. Here are the kids getting the first sounds of the corps coming down the street.

They were impressive. Adah couldn't believe some of them were really small kids.

Nathaniel liked the scepter and said he wanted one. :)

I didn't get a part of the playing that I thought I did, but this gives you an idea of how they sounded. We marched behind them all the way to the lawn, and that was the highlight of the day for me. We had such a fun time, and I'm eager to go back next year. It was such fun on this trip to see them connecting what we had been studying with real history. When some kids were playing with toys on the lawn, Cora said, "Those are bilbo catchers! We made those!" (it was a colonial craft at home) They were able to listen with better understanding to the interpreters as they explained what they were doing, and the whole experience was so much fun with bigger kids. I'm enjoying this stage in life with all of them. What blessings they are, and what joy they bring to my heart!

Jamestown

Over the weekend of the 19th-21st of September, the kids and I made a trip to Williamsburg and Jamestown for Williamsburg's homeschool week. We also got to see dear friends from Colorado Springs, (a LONG time ago!) because they now live in Williamsburg. They took in our clan in fine style. The boys were most impressed with Lanning's grilling technique, and all of them were impressed with the way they projected a movie onto their wall for movie night. :) Here are pictures from Jamestown, and pictures from Williamsburg will follow in another post.
Abigail, Adah, and Jackson seem to handle a dugout canoe really well.
The musket firing demonstration was a must-see according to Jackson.



Jackson takes his job as a guard seriously. Nathaniel also put on his serious face. Adah and Cora try their hand (neck?) at the yoke for carrying water. This is a picture of the kids sitting in front of the Susan Constant, one of the three ships that sailed to Jamestown. We had just studied this time period in history, so this was really fun for them to connect reality with history.

They had a good time exploring the Susan Constant, but they marveled at how small (and smelly) it was. :) Shiloh tried out the captain's berth and pronounced it uncomfortable. Jackson liked his bed, though. This picture looks out on the Discovery and the Godspeed from the Susan Constant. Here are the kids exploring the Discovery (I think?). I can't remember which one came next!

After we explored the ships, we traveled up a path to see the recreation of a Powhatan village. We saw a woman there skinning a freshly killed deer. Yuck. Abigail was impressed. Cora was not impressed that all of the "interpreters" were white and not actually Indians. :) She felt ripped off, since that was the thing she most looked forward to at Jamestown.

The girls were interested in feeling all the different animal skins. You could take a bone knife and scrape away at the skin hanging up here. Shiloh took this picture, and I think she instructed Jackson to look as if he killed all those animals. Cora liked the bed of skins! We ended the day with a ferryboat ride across the Chesapeake Bay. The kids were so excited, and I was getting such a kick out of seeing their enthusiasm just for a ferry ride. It's the simple things, really. We rode across, drove off, turned around, and drove back on for the ride back. :) What wonderful weather we had for the trip, even though it was supposed to rain the whole time. We are so thankful for good friends that made this trip possible, and for living in Virginia where all this opportunity to experience the history of our country is so plentiful!