VBS

We made it to church for Father's Day even after all of our travels.  Todd picked up Henry from his classroom and Henry asked him, "Are you as big as a door?"  Todd answered honestly, but then he saw Henry's sheet that he had done that day entitled, "My Daddy."  He filled in different items like his Daddy's name, age, favorite food, favorite color, etc.  For the statement, "He is as big as...," Henry had his teachers write in, "a door."

The boys did Vacation Bible School at our church all week.  The theme was "Submerged" and so there were lots of underwater animals/games/etc. as part of it.  Todd had also bought them goggles while we were gone, so they spent a lot of the afternoons this week wearing their goggles and pretending to be in a submarine.

Josiah, not looking forward.

scuba gear

I selfishly didn't volunteer thinking it would be great to have a morning just me and Caroline all week.  But it didn't really end up that way.  We spent the majority of the morning driving to and fro.  I hadn't anticipated morning traffic, and construction on the roads, so it wasn't much of a morning.  Next year I'll definitely volunteer.

VBS exhausted Henry and Caroline, so there were many more naps than usual.  This also meant we had more night owls than usual, too.

Tuesday:

Thursday:

I discovered I had more respect for Todd than before when I cut the grass on Monday.  I started with the backyard, which I do on occasion.  Super easy, no problem.  Then I did the front yard for the first time.  It was 2:30 p.m. on a summer afternoon in Texas.  Our front yard doesn't look that big, but I was drowning in sweat by the end.  I guzzled the water down.  So now when Todd mows the front I will have much more sympathy when he comes in all hot and sweaty and tired.

Mid-week, Todd spoke on the phone with a lady from church about a volunteering opportunity he had inquired about.  Towards the end of the conversation, she asked him, "Are you Henry's dad?"  He answered in the affirmative, and she turned out to be his Sunday School teacher.  She said they just love him and mentioned how much he talks in class!!!  He told them all about Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  I never knew, and would not have guessed, that he spoke a lot in class!  Caroline always tells me how she never speaks during her class.  She's almost proud of not saying a word.

The last day of VBS they had an evening rally for families to attend.  Josiah and Henry were excited to see Scuba Steve.  Todd and I cracked up because Scuba Steve was actually one of the youth pastors at the church and he spoke in an Australian accent the whole time.

Caroline enjoyed the songs and dance.  She tried to keep up with the dancers arm movements for the first few numbers.  Then she just talked and moved around the rest of the time.

Saturday, the boys got on their bikes to ride and it promptly rained.  It's so hot here, that we just let them go with it.  They had a great time riding.


The kids were looking cute before church this morning, so I ushered them to the backyard for a couple of pictures.

We're headed back to school next week.  We're going to do school-lite for a few weeks.  The kids will be thrilled I'm sure.

Vacation Days

Day 1 of summer vacation, 7:00 a.m.  Josiah says to me, 'You know the days are kind of boring without school."  He did say this after having been up for several hours because he had already finished his Memorial Day sign.  He had traced each of these letter characters from his old phonics book.

The letters in the characters spell out, "Memorial Day."

Day 2 of summer vacation we took off heading east.  Nothing like a 1400-mile car ride to cure that boredom.  Henry spent the first day playing with his bed sheet that he insisted he bring.  He made a "house" with it by putting it over his head.  This made Caroline quite jealous as she could not make a similar house with her beloved blanket.  At one point her very verbal and continuous desire to have what Henry had prompted him to share with her.

In their neighborhood.

The next day, the small, tight quarters of Henry's "house" turned into a roomier and more luxurious "tent."  We will always bring a bed sheet for our car trips now.  They proved to provide quite the entertainment.

Caroline's theme for the car trips was, "I'm thirsty."  After the first leg of the trip of giving her small sips of water, her thimble-size bladder kept needing emptying.  So, she probably was thirsty for a lot of the trip.  She was allowed to drink, but it was strictly monitored and timed to when we would take our food breaks.  At one point, her food got regulated as well.  She wanted a second sandwich, which I would not make for her because I had just witnessed the ratio of peanut butter-to-mouth vs. peanut butter-to-carseat from her previous sandwich, and it was not good.  She got mad and emphatically said, "I don't like Mississippi!" (whose state we were in).  Three-year olds saying, "Mississippi" is always entertaining.

Josiah got his siblings to hold their breath when we hit the bridge-tunnel close to our destination.  As soon as we reached the water, he told them to take a deep breath.  Meanwhile, he sat in the back breathing normally.  Henry and Caroline still don't know how to hold their breath, so while they had fat cheeks "holding air," they were breathing comfortably through their noses.

Josiah had a hard adjustment to the one hour forward once we entered the Eastern Time Zone.  We reminded him the first night in Virginia, that he still had to sleep until the "6."  But we caught him awake at 2:30 a.m. saying he couldn't sleep and he wanted to start his day.  He stayed awake until 3:30 a.m.  I know, because he kept talking to me.

We got to spend a lot of time with family.  We met up with extended family in Smithfield.  The boys enjoyed walking through their farm to the lake.  They also enjoyed Todd's very talented aunt's ceramics shop.  I was happy we didn't break any of her wares!  Caroline, our "not-an-animal-lover" child, was scared of the cats and dog, so she hid inside the house or cowered near the car.


Since Caroline did so well with the cats and dogs, we thought we'd head on back to Bluebird Gap Farm with Grandad & Nana for some more animal fun.  She wanted nothing to do with the animals until we saw the pigs being fed.  The kids thought it was funny that they ate salad (lettuce and tomatoes).  That lightened her up and she did well for the rest of the time there.  Plus they have a huge playground which was a big draw.

The kids all made sure they climbed Grandad & Nana's tree.  Henry and Caroline got up quite a bit higher than last year.

They also had a ton of fun riding bikes with Grandad & Nana's neighbor, Bryce (or "Rice" as Henry likes to call him).  Bryce had turned four not too long ago, but he does BMX racing, so his bike skills were very advanced.  Grandad & Nana spent the weeks before we arrived scouring thrift stores for bikes for the kids.  They found three bikes and got amazing deals on them!  Caroline shocked us all with her bike riding.  Henry improved a lot, I think in part because he wanted to keep up with Bryce.

Grandad performed miracles while we were there.  He got Josiah to eat cauliflower one night and green beans the next, all without complaining.  Not just a teensie, tiny bite, he actually ate a decent portion of each.

Caroline turned OCD on Henry.  At Grandad and Nana's house, there were two towels hanging up on a bar in the bathroom.  When we were in the bathroom one time, she wiped her mouth on one towel, but then didn't know where to wipe her hands.  I casually told her to wipe her hands on the other towel next to the first towel.  So, from that point on, she wiped her mouth on the one towel, her hands on the other.  Then several days later, she freaked out at Henry when he had the audacity to wipe his hands on the face towel.  She screamed at him that he was supposed to wipe his hands on the hand towel.  This is a girl who knows what she wants and is not afraid to say it.

Josiah learned a little of what it is like to share a bed with Henry.  Henry likes to lay perpendicular with whomever he is sharing a bed.  We need to pray for his wife now, or at least pray that giant beds will be invented by then.

We were very excited to catch up with old friends.  There was a pool and a trampoline, so fun was had by all.  As the amount of fun increased, the volume of water decreased proportionally.

the beginning - nice and full pool

the end - sides of pool collapsing with much less water to hold them up

Finally we headed up north to celebrate Great Grandma's birthday and see more family.  Josiah is a big fan of Great Grandma's and remembers all the drawing techniques she teaches him.

We spent one day watching the Clarendon Cup bike race which was very neat.  It was a 100 km race and it was in such a tight area, that the bikers had to do 100 laps to finish.  We enjoyed the whooshing sound of the bikers passing by for the first four laps, at which point Caroline decided she needed to use the facilities.  We snuck into a restaurant's bathroom.  Usually I feel bad about using a business's bathroom without buying anything, but I went with the, "I'll-never-see-them-again" mentality.  What's the most they can do?  Kick us out?  

The bike race also had several fun things for the kids to do.
Giant Connect Four was fun:

Playing tag in an unsupervised bounce house was fun (and amazingly no injuries):

And Henry showed some skills with cornhole:

The kids loved, loved, loved spending the day with their cousins.

The kids were excited to get to the beach and see Grandma & Grandpa again.  We finally made it and then sleeping schedules got all out of whack.  The first night, Henry was so exhausted he fell asleep before dinner.

Then Caroline went to bed that night, slept one hour, and woke up asking for breakfast.  She stayed awake for a couple of hours chatting up Grandpa and Grandma, while still asking me for breakfast.  So finally, at 10:30 p.m. she settled down for some breakfast hash after which we both fell asleep.

We tried our hand at pirate golf again.  Josiah had a good swing, but was a bit too powerful for putt-putt.  I'd be interested in how far he could whack the ball on a real golf course.

Henry did well and could get the ball in the hole in a relatively small number of strokes.

And sweet Caroline really enjoyed the water features, playing with her purple ball, and sticking her club in the hole.  So we paid $7.50 for the memories with her.

All that golfing tuckered Caroline out, so when the cousins came and they all played freeze tag, Caroline casually sat in her lawn chair in the middle.

The kids have the best cousins ever.  Our kids loved on them and hugged on them practically every waking moment.  Not only did they graciously put up with all the hugging, but they showed our kids such kindness.  We hope our kids mature as well as their cousins have.  They have to feel at least 45 pounds lighter since we left, no longer having a child hanging on them.

They were also kind enough to lend Henry some of their warm clothes since it got cool at the beach.  They may encourage us to bring our own warm clothes next year after watching Henry eat an ice cream cone with sprinkles.  Chocolate doesn't stain, right?

Freddie won "Uncle of the Year" award for flying the kite that we brought, but then asked him to put it together and get it flying.


Finally it was time to go back to Virginia, pick up Todd again, and drive back home.  We were pretty exhausted the first day of the drive back.  We crashed pretty early at the hotel (before 8 p.m).  I set my alarm for 4:40 a.m., but didn't realize it was set for 4:40 a.m. Eastern Time even though we had crossed into Central Time.  So, Todd and I were up at 3:40 the next morning and could not figure out the correct time for quite a while.  The hotel had both Eastern and Central TV stations which did not help the matter.  It did cause us to get an early start, so we made it back to our house while there was still daylight.

We had fun, but it is always nice to come home.

Here are some more vacation pictures:

Caroline got herself stuck in Grandad & Nana's tree.  So, of course, I took a picture before pulling her out.