The Vacation

It seems incredibly difficult to encapsulate three and a half weeks of fun into a relatively short space.  So, here we go.

VIRGINIA

The kids were so, so excited to see their Grandad & Nana again.  Henry even said he wanted to be an engineer at NASA just like his Grandad.  Josiah responded with, "I'm not sure what I want to do.  I'll just be a man with a pig and I'll bring my pig to visit Henry at NASA every day."
Todd took a trip down memory lane and got out all of his old games from the attic.  He and Henry had a few games of Gunfight at the OK Corral.

We played with bubbles, ran around the yard, played baseball, ate many delicious dinners, and took rides steering Grandad's lawnmower.

Grandad & Nana took us all to a Chinese buffet.  Our kids were apparently not familiar with the word "buffet."  Josiah kept calling it the buffet, as in Jimmy Buffet.  Henry said we were going to the Chinese bucket.  Henry at least ventured out and tried some Chinese food.  Caroline filled her plate with Chinese chicken nuggets and french fries.  Josiah ate mostly plates of carbs, but he did "try" the Mongolian BBQ.  Of all the meats and vegetables and other items you could choose from, he picked a small pile of noodles that he ended up not liking because they had flavor on them (soy sauce?).  With him, we're just glad he tried it.  The adults enjoyed it all!

We got to see old friends which was great.  The boys got to spend time swimming with old friends one day while Caroline was still in the hospital.  Fortunately, we got to go back and spend a second day with them so we all got to catch up with our friends.

The kids enjoyed playing with Bryce, Grandad & Nana's neighbor.  If they ever spotted Bryce outside, they were ready to run and play with him, and he is just the friendliest kid.

We went back to Bluebird Gap Farm where Henry wanted a picture of himself with every animal.  We made it through the farm in record speed and played on the playground before they got to the stage which is what they all wanted to do.  They all danced and jumped off the front.  Henry went from a Russian dancer to a mosh-pit rocker.

One day we went up to see Great-Grandma and celebrated her birthday a week late.  She had salvaged a keyboard from their trash area, cleaned it up, and the kids loved it.  It was a very coveted item on the drive back to Texas.  They played the demo songs repetitively.  All three kids love Greensleeves now and can recognize it immediately.

BEACH

We had a great week at the beach.  Josiah started it off by jumping through the porch window, rolling onto, and then off of Henry's bed, onto the floor where he injured his back and thought he couldn't move anymore.  When paralysis didn't set in, I got him up and had him lay in his bed while I securely locked the window with threats that they were not to do that again.  He really did hurt his back, though, it hurt for a few days.  Lesson learned?  Probably not.  The kids were so happy to see their grandparents though.

Of course, all three kids were up before 6:00 a.m. the next morning, so we got an early start on the beach.  The kids loved playing in the sand and splashing in the waves.  I tried to keep Caroline away from the water at the beginning of our trip since her neck was still healing, but after a few days, it was hard to keep her away from the ocean.  She loved jumping the waves.  Unfortunately I took no water pictures, because I had a death grip on her hand the whole time.

We tried our hand at pirate golf again.  It was as if I took the three little bears with me.  Josiah thought he was a pro-golfer out hitting balls on the range, he hit so hard and far.  Caroline gently tapped her ball, so she had a 20 stroke average per hole.  Yet she hoisted her club in the air to celebrate each time it went in the hole.  Henry seemed to catch onto the putt-putt concept the best.  He even made a hole in one on the last hole winning himself a free game.


We did all the beach things.  We rode the trolley.

We ate fries and ice cream.


We even went to the playground for some fun, until Josiah wandered away from the playground area and explored all the port-a-potties.  We left for some good full body sanitizing after that.

The best day of all was when their cousins arrived.  These kids love their cousins.  They ran all around the house and the yard, they ate together and played together.  When we walked into town for ice cream, they all held hands and sang Ring Around the Rosie (Caroline would fall to the ground each time the song got to that part).  Josiah, Henry, and Caroline had very full hearts in their presence.  It was hard to say goodbye.

JAMESTOWN
On our last day in Virginia, we finally made it to Jamestown.  We went to the recreated settlement as opposed to the "ruins" one.  The three ships were a big highlight.  The kids could walk all over them and touch everything.  On one of the ships, the interpreter asked the boys if they wanted to help him fix the sail.  They happily pulled the ropes for him and tied it back down.  I'm not sure how many times a day he did this with kids, but they really thought they were helping out which was awesome.

They loved the Powhatan village a lot, too.  They could go in all of the huts, they ground corn, they sat in a canoe that was made there.  They hollowed out the canoes by slowly burning the tree trunks.  They had one tree actually burning and one side of it had a lot of ash that they allowed the kids to scrape out with oyster shells.  Ours tried it, getting ash on their hands, of course, and then Caroline had to scratch her nose, so she had nice little black marks on her face.

the scraping

the scratching

After the Indian village we went to the fort for the English folk.  There we watched an interpreter fire a musket and explain the weaponry difference between the Powhatans and the English.  After hearing about that, Josiah wanted to race back to the Indian village to warn them about the English's guns.  We had to explain he was 410 years too late for that.

We asked them what they liked best.  Josiah said the ships.  Henry was very gracious and said he liked "learning" the best.  If you based what they liked best on where we spent a lot of time, I'd say the water fountains were pretty high up there.  We even got a family picture taken by a gracious tourist.  There aren't many pictures with all of us in it.

The drive back to Texas wasn't too bad, although on day 2 I was thinking I was going to have to call the doctor to get the kids checked out for UTI's we were having to stop so much.  One of our stops was at Buc-ee's which here in Texas is a kind of a big thing.  It's like a gas station on steroids (our pump was #220), but they're known for their clean bathrooms.  The bathrooms were quite clean and the store had everything you could possibly want.  T-shirts, food, wall art, propane tanks, and their famous fudge and jerky.  It was quite the collection.

Henry wearing the noise-cancelling headphones.  Whenever a child put these on said child all of a sudden got a lot louder.

This past week the kids have switched beds.  They thought it would be a fun thing to do and spent all of Monday switching.  You'd think all they'd have to do was switch their pillows around, but our kids wanted to go all the way.  They put their pj's and "morning" clothes in the other's dressers.  Caroline had her jewelry box and hair brush in the boy's room.  It was quite a move.  But what happened was great.  Josiah slept in Caroline's room, so he got to get up at his usual early time and didn't disturb anybody.  Henry and Caroline slept in the bunk beds and didn't get up until 7:30 which is late around here.  They wanted to stay switched, so we didn't want to upset that good sleeping pattern.  Now I'm thinking Josiah needs his own room because this is working out.  He's been thinking the same thing...