Virginia Vacation - Jamestown

Continuing on our vacation, on day three we had some company join us on our adventures in Virginia - Grandma and Grandpa drove down from New York.  On this day we hit up Jamestown, part of the Historic Triangle.

For those who aren't history buffs, Jamestown is the first surviving colonial settlement.  You may remember the story of John Smith and Pocahontas.  That came out of Jamestown...

Once we paid for our admission into the Settlement (which also scored us tickets to Yorktown, the 3rd city in the Historic Triangle) we ventured in.  Here Grandpa and Drew try to climb the tall tower in the courtyard.

We decided to hit the Fort.  This is a replica of what the British explorers (among which was John Smith) built to protect them from the "natives" and the elements.

Our protectors for this trip...

Drew was found sleeping on the job.

 He wanted to play act everywhere he went, it cracked us up!

Here's their church.. Drew had to give his "sermon" from the lower pulpit (I couldn't see him when he tried to go to the top one).

Drew was excited to find a quoits game - we saw this in Williamsburg the day before, but my camera battery died when I tried to get pictures of the boys playing it.  Notice it's like a colonial version of horseshoes.

Barrel room..

Grandpa joins the other armed guards...

We couldn't leave the fort until Daddy did some heavy lifting and brought us some water.

After some time in the Fort, we decided to venture down to some replica ships.  The first settlers came on three ships.  The first was the Susan Constant.

The boys decided to explore the ships.  Grandma and I decided to find some shade... the hot muggy weather was a bit too much for me.

Here are some pictures Dave took on his cell phone. From the ships.

After the shipyard, we made our way back toward the Indian Village.

Here Grandma and I are checking out the animal skins.  I had to drape it across the front of me... my um, boobs were sweating through my shirt.

Drew conned Grandpa to carry him as long as possible.  That was one patient Grandpa... that kid is heavy and it was HOT!

Dave and I hanging out in the canoe... who needs water to explore in a boat?

A Powhatan hut

Me inside the Powhatan hut....

 Grandma checking out all the Indian artifacts.

Drew is grinding the corn... 

And here's a funny story, in the Indian Village there was a guy standing by a hut without his shirt.  Dave walked up to him, and asked if he could take his picture with him.  The guy says sure... then Dave dropped on him, he wanted to take his shirt off too - you know because he was Native American and he wanted to make it look authentic.  Dave wanted to know if it was okay.

The guy said "Um,  I've never been asked that before" as he looks around nervously - there was a tour guide and tourists walking up at that moment.  I told Dave to just hurry up and do it...

That was the result.  The man quickly walked off - I think we managed to embarrass him.  Hopefully the tour guide wasn't his boss and he didn't get in trouble.

Shortly after this we decided to pack it up and hit up Yorktown, it was already starting to get late, and the natives were getting hungry.

Virginia Vacation - Colonial Williamsburg

Get ready for a ton of photos... on our Virginia Vacation last month we hit up a ton of tourist attractions today we'll explore Colonial Williamsburg.  This is a life-size village with actors in costume and all showing you what early America would be like at the brink of the Revolutionary War.  

We had to get the $40/person tickets and then take a shuttle to the town.  Here's what we found when we go there.

Here's the Tinshop

 The blacksmith shop

Drew climbing on the wagon outside the blacksmith shop.

You never know what you'll spot walking down the street... here was an ox!

And horse carriages...

Fife and drummers...

 Colonials...

We just wandered around the town and tried to find shade and cool areas whenever possible.  It was about 98-degrees with humidity in the 90% range.

We found the old jail in town.  Drew really hammed it up.  Here are he and Dave looking at me standing in the courtyard.

Drew's face cracks me up in that one.

Speaking of cracks... here's Drew pretending to go #2 in the jail's public potty. 

The tour guide said they'd have 70 people in these cells that were maybe 10x10.  Talk about being clausterphobic.

We then wandered to the militia camp where they were doing the canon demonstration.  This was the first of several canon demos we saw this trip.

And Drew holding one of the canon balls.

I was very impressed with Drew, he was intrigued by this demonstration and  wanted to ask the "Captain" some questions.  While I knew the answer and tried to give it to him, Drew had his mind set that he wanted the "Captain" to tell him.  His question was why didn't the wall they fired the canon into explode - well it's because they only put gunpowder in there not the ball.  Of course Drew accepted that answer and not the same one I provided.

We then wandered on and came upon the carpenter's house.  Here's a family shot from the creek behind the carpernter's house.

At this point Drew was getting hot, tired and bored. I have to admit it was a lot of walking around in the heat.  So Dave propped him up on his shoulders and we headed out toward the other side of town.  Beautiful open areas and historic buildings.

And then we spotted the courthouse and the fun stuff for the boys to play with in front...

Those are my little prisoners. Hehe

After sitting in the cool courthouse for a bit, we decided to make our way down to the other side of town and start heading back.  Drew was about done.  Can you tell in this shot with the Colonials?

We decided to wait and watch an upcoming show in front of the Capitol Building.

Finding some shade, Drew was happy to sit and wait.

Turns out it was a show with Benedict Arnold trying to convince everyone to join the Brits and avoid forming a New Nation.

While we were waiting for the show, someone told us to check out the Powell House on the outskirts of town.  Apparently they have interactive things for the kids to do.  And boy do they!

Here's Drew getting put to work...

He had to help the lady pour out the cooking water and scrub buckets.

His reward for working - a lettuce leaf to go and feed the chickens outside in the coop. (the chicken is in the bottom left corner of the picture - it's hard to see through the slats)

After his chores, he could play games inside.. here he's beating Daddy at checkers.

And then he learned how to play letter dice (kind of like boggle)

It's hard to make out what he wrote on his slate... if you look carefully in the upper right corner you can see he found the word "F-A-R-T".  He was quite proud of himself.

Back outside he found a colonial version of bowling.

A side view of the Powell House where he found all these fun activities.

Every building that had something inside to explore had a British flag outside.  For $42/adult we had a great day.  Thankfully Drew was free (for another 2 months) because while it was great, the fact he was free made it even more enjoyable for us and for our pocket books.  Dave and I said while we were really glad we did it, we probably won't do it again - due to cost mostly.

Virginia Vacation - Our Vacation "Home"

So we were pretty excited by our accommodations for this trip - we were staying at Greensprings Vacation Resort just outside Williamsburg.  We had a 1200 Sq Ft 2 Bedroom 2 bath timeshare that had all the amenities inside.  We spent quite a bit of time there in the evenings whether it was cooking dinner (as I mentioned we tried to do this while saving money) and hanging out in the pool. 

This trip we played a lot of card games - primarily Uno

The first night we checked in, Drew and I went on a bit of a nature walk...

We went into our backyard where we found a ton of lightning bugs - I've never seen them before!  Of course they don't turn out well when you try and snap picture of them.

Here was our room from the balcony, we stayed on the 3rd level of the "plantation" house.

And we were on the 16th hole.

Drew pretending to walk... he asked me to take this photo.

Sunset from the other side of the golf course (not sure what hole it was).

And the view of our "plantation" house from the front.  We were in the right on the third level.  There were 2 units per floor and our building had 2 entrances so a total of 9 units per entrance or 18 total.

Virginia Vacation - Virginia Beach

We are coming off of the greatest vacation ever - well one of the greatest vacations as a family anyway.  Nearly 2 weeks later, we're still talking about things we did - which was a lot!  So rather than one mega post, I'm going to break it up, because we took so many pictures and had so many stories to tell.

We flew out to Williamsburg (Newport News) a day early because I could save hundreds of dollars by going out Saturday vs. Sunday and that's even with getting a hotel room for a day.  So we spent our first full day of vacation at Virginia Beach.

Drew thought it was pretty cool that we were hanging out in the Atlantic Ocean (the first time he's seen it).

All he wanted to do for the 3 hours we were there was "surf" in the waves.

And he got pretty brave battling the waves, and wanted to venture far out.  It helped that the tide was getting lower while we were there.

 I believe he spent about 2 1/2 hours in the ocean "riding" the waves and then looking for seashells.  We tried to keep costs down this trip so we packed a picnic lunch and he came up (by force) to eat something before he went back out to the water.

Here we are as we were getting ready to pack it up and head out to the timeshare for check-in.

We "parked" ourselves on the beach near the fishing pier, so we grabbed a shot under the pier/boardwalk.

That was our view (from across the walkway) of where we spent our afternoon.  Isn't it lovely?

Not so lovely was what we came back to the car to find...

A parking ticket!  Stupid Virginia Beach sets up tourists - I'm positive.  So we parked in a meter space, but apparently you have to be careful about which meter you pay - you should pay the one on the same side of the street you parked, not the one closest to your car, because apparently there is a difference.  So while we paid the meter, we paid the wrong one, and were given a ticket.  The fine was a whopping $12, but it's the principle of the matter.

Anyway, while we were ticked about the ticket (and the traffic getting out of Virginia Beach) we still had a great day and we were excited to check out our timeshare in Williamsburg!

Father's Day 2013

This past Father's Day, we decided to stay low key - or rather Daddy decided he wanted a low key day.  We played hooky from church and decided to go bowling for the afternoon.

At this alley it's either all players use bumpers or no one does... so we all played with bumpers.

They boys marking the fact Daddy got a Double Strike.

And here are our final scores after 2 games... all with bumpers.  Drew started, then me, and Dave at the bottom.  Notice how mine and Dave's scores tanked the 2nd game?!  That was a couple of pitchers of beer in...

It was a fun Father's Day afternoon!