The Trip Home

Instead of taking the boring interstate all the way home, we extended our adventure by taking the scenic route home through the Outer Banks of NC. It was beautiful and we made a few fun stops. My pictures are actually completely backwards as far as the order we did things. So, starting with our final adventure--to get back to the mainland we had to take a ferry, drive a bit and take another ferry. The first ferry was about 40 minutes and we thought the second ferry would also be about 40 minutes. It left at 6 so we figured we'd stop for dinner after we got off the ferry. After we were on it for about 20 minutes we discovered that we actually had a two and a half hour ride! We were pretty surprised, especially considering that we had mostly depleted our travel snacks and were left with pretzels and a little beef jerky with some pita chips thrown in. The kids all had a snack and thankfully us grown ups had eaten a pretty big lunch and we settled in for the ride.
Woohoo for electronics! Joe played my iPod for a while, the girls watched part of a movie...

We had a rousing game of Skip-bo and then once we saw land we all crowded on to the deck to watch the ferry bring us back to land.

The dinner we were hoping to find right after we got off the ferry wasn't to be found...there was literally NOTHING for a good 45 minutes. We finally found a Hardees and we arrived mere minutes before they were closing for the night. The best laid plans of mice and men...
Earlier in the day...we visited Kitty Hawk, NC. The site of the Wright Brother's first success in flying. We heard a man speak about their flying machine and it was very interesting. In the bookstore I wanted to read a book to the kids about the Wright Brothers and Hannah reminded me that they knew all about them. Apparently, although I only vaguely remember it, I read them the Childhood of Famous American's story of the Wright Brothers last year sometime. This is why I now keep a running list of "books I read to my kids" on my sidebar.
We also stopped at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and Ollie, Billy, Grace, and Joe climbed the whole thing!
All in all it was a fun day filled with adventure. The next morning Ollie and the kids spent some time at the beach before we piled in the car to truck it a little more ways down the road. I have no pictures from the last two days, we mostly just drove. And, here ends the posts and pictures of our trip. We had a wonderful, amazing, extraordinary, supercalifragilisticexpealidocious time!!

Colonial Williamsburg--Day 2

The first place we visited on our second day in Williamsburg was the Good Hope Plantation. It was interesting, this man above is checking the tobacco plants for hornworms. We helped him out as you can see in the top picture. Below, Hannah is wearing Joe's tricorn hat but wasn't too happy with me trying to get a picture.


Above, we are in a slave house and below on a tour of the Governor's Palace. This tour of the Palace was one of my favorite things. The tour guide pretended to be a maid who was just in awe of all the opulence. She treated us as though we were guests for that evening's dance. She was so realistic and stayed in character so well that as we were leaving for dinner later that evening, Grace asked if we would be going to the dance.


The gardens outside of the Governor's Palace were just beautiful. The girls especially loved this spruce lined path that you see above and a couple of pictures down.



After our tour of the Governor's Palace we made our way onto the main street and visited almost all of the places we had missed the day before. Above is the printing press. I think this was all the more interesting to my kids after reading "Johnny Tremain," because he worked as an apprentice to a printer. If you are ever going to take your kids to Colonial Williamsburg, I highly recommend reading "Johnny Tremain," first. It really set the stage for my kids to understand what they were seeing better.
Here are the girls at the jail--there were four cells. Below, Hannah is posing on something that appears to be a potty.

Hannah begging for mercy for her poor, locked up sister!

The armory was a really neat place. They have a lot of real, antique weapons as well as some remakes.

The girls and I enjoyed the coffeehouse tour. This was another one of those tours where they treat you as though you are back in the 19th century. The "guide" was all in a tizzy talking about a murder that had happened and was in the paper. She had Grace read the article aloud to the room. After we chatted with her for a bit in one room, she took us into the tea room and we could have tea, coffee, or chocolate--basically like hot chocolate but much more bitter. Here, the printer was sitting and talking with us about the town gossip. Later, at dinner that night, his wife (pretend wife) came in to talk to us and asked if anyone had met her husband yet and then went on and on about how "friendly" he is with the ladies. It was pretty neat how they have created a town complete with characters that stick to a general story.

The final things we saw were the blacksmith--I was unimpressed with this guy. He said almost nothing and answered questions with the shortest possible answer. They need to find a better blacksmith. The wigmaker (below) however, was fabulous. We learned so much about wigs and who wore them and how they were made and more.


After an afternoon rest in the hotel, we went back out for dinner at the King's Arms Tavern. Here they served traditional 19th century food including a Game Pye that had rabbit and quail in it. None of our group were brave enough to try it. Harriet, Billy, and I did have the Tavern dinner which was very good and included Peanut Soup. Peanut Soup is basically really thin peanut butter. I was thinking that it would make a great Thai soup with a little coconut milk, fish sauce, and red pepper thrown in. The meal was excellent and so was the entertainment. We had a woman come in and play some music and sing some songs and the Printer's wife came in and chatted with us. They insisted that we all wear our napkins around our neck as Uncle Billy is modeling for us below.

And that is the end of our time in Colonial Williamsburg--BUT--stay tuned because our drive home held some more fun sightseeing opportunities!

Colonial Williamsburg, Day 1

Huzzah! That can mean two things in Colonial Williamsburg--one is "hooray!" and the other is the little restaurant at the hotel we stayed at. We had dinner there one night and breakfast there twice. Our first day in Williamsburg with learning to play "hoop and stick" out on the green. The kids loved this game and played again and again. It took them a little while to get the hang of it but once they got it... I have some cute video that I will share on a future post.



After hoop and stick, we visited the shoemaker and learned a lot about making shoes. Then it was time for our Apprentice tour. We visited three different employers and learned about their trades and even got to try some things out. The first was the weaver. The kids had to make a quill right away which is basically a spool of thread.




Then they went over to the loom where the weaver showed them how to make a rug/blanket out of small pieces of yarn. They each got to try their hand at making a knot in this rug. Joe had a hard time but thankfully the weaver was patient with him.


After the weaver we went to the book bindery where the kids learned about books and how they were bound and how to bind a book expensively and cheaply. Then they got to make their own cover using a paste that had been dyed purple.





Lastly, we went to the brickmaker's tent. I think this was everybody's favorite mostly because we got to play in mud. The brickmakers were very busy because they have to make thousands and thousands of bricks this summer for some new construction coming up this fall. They make them the old fashioned way. They first knead the clay with their feet and take out all stones and other uwanted objects, then they shape them in molds and set them in the sun to dry. After they are done making bricks, they use the unfinished bricks to make a big oven and then fire them in the oven that they are made of. After all that, they have bricks.
While we were waiting our turn to knead the mud, the kids made marbles.

Here we all are in the mud pit, I have to say that it felt good to walk in that cold, sticky mud on a hot day. I did feel like I was going to get stuck more than once. The mud is really thick and heavy.

I need o add the picture above to my growing folder of "really bad pictures of me." Eeeewwww, not pretty!
They had big barrels of water for cleaning so we didn't have to walk around muddy.
One of our last stops of the day was the Milliner. This was a favorite for everyone. I always thought a milliner was someone who made and decorated hats but really the milliner sold a little bit of everything. She had a "million" things. This woman was very good at her job and had us captivated for a good half hour.
We watched the drum and fife corp before heading back to the hotel for a rest before the evening's festivities. Most of the "band" were young kids. I guess if you live in Williamsburg, being in the drum and fife corp is just another extracurricular activity.

After our rest, we headed back out to dinner and Murdock's Medley. Grace wore the dress and hat that some friends had loaned us and she looked so cute. Thanks Kirsten! We had an outdoor bbq style dinner with some entertainment but the real fun began when Murdock came and got us and took us to the "theatre." There we saw a sort of traveling variety show and we all loved it. It was very funny!




And, that was the end of another fun day on our trip. We ended just about every day with some time watching the Disney Channel (well, the kids did). We don't have cable so Disney Channel is a treat we indulge in whenever we find ourselves in a hotel room (almost never).