colonial williamsburg

on Monday morning we woke up early and headed to a timeshare owners breakfast with laura and david where the salesman actually thought we were laura and david's children. so lame vacationing with mom and dad. ;) after breakfast while the owners talked, matt and I enjoyed a lovely walk around the property. we had to take a pic in the Maryland section. representing the 301, yo!

after forever we finally made it to colonial Williamsburg. first thing we noticed was francis street, spelled wrong, but still. cute fingernail bitten frankie finger.

the gang!

love the details!

after sorting out tickets (turns out military can get 4 people in free, which I wish we had known before we bought non-refundable tickets here) we caught a shuttle to the governors mansion. digging frankie's new face.

mama and baby. I've decided not to let her turn 5 next month. she's fighting me on it, but i'm pretty persuasive.

he was smiling at me a split second before this shot.

a bug and a boy. I had a friend ask me if bubba was her favorite sibling because she's always talking about bubba this and bubba that, and not really her sisters. pretty funny.

mid jump! matt thinks this thing was to help people climb into carriages.

we put franks to work. and addie thinks the inventor of this stick broom was dumb.

it was a cold and grey November day.

the grounds were just lovely. everything was.

we checked out the cellar. frankie hated it.

and then inside the mansion. weapon loving bubba was in heaven!

we had a cute little tour guide that did a good job.

weapons everywhere!

the girls got to check out some of their toys. they were all fascinated with the curling iron, not that that's a toy, but still.

and there was some dancing in the ballroom.

then we checked out the maze.

with this cutie.

love the way d is looking at her daddy. so presh.

we asked if any movies had been filmed here and they said one of the American girl movies was and this was felicity's house. not that we've seen it, but we thought that was cool.

I loved all of the creative wreaths!

we enjoyed watching spoons being made and melted within a matter of minutes.

learning about money.

and playing colonial games.

the girls loved it.

they've wanted fans forever. Christmas, here we come.

we played games

and drank root beer.

and learned about more weapons.

we watched books being bound.

and got some treats from the bakery.

the sun finally came out!

I had no clue what to expect, but it was a really neat place.

I would love to go back and see all the places we didn't have time to see.

we saw the courthouse, gaol (jail for those like us, who were searching and searching for the jail, as we were right in front of it with the weird spelling), and brickmakers. at 5 when everything closed we met up with mccombs at a tavern for some good old fashioned colonial fare - chicken tenders and sandwiches. and the girls got serenaded.

crazy kids and their phones.

more crazy kids, but without phones.

and the craziest kids of all.

there they are! look at those smiles!

we met a lovely family from Australia and talked to them for a long time about their 6 week journey around the eastern united states. what a dream to tour around Australia for 6 weeks! we finally caught the shuttle back and it was time for a few souvies.

smashed pennies teamwork.

guns are fun. bubba had just turned around in time for my picture.

and the girls with their "gadgets." we also picked out our yearly Christmas ornaments here.

it was a special day with the family.

indian summer

we've had a few really cold days, but mostly they've been pleasant and warm'ish. reports are for a coooold and snoooowy winter, so I am loving this indian summer. yesterday was our day with the pre-k princesses. they are a handful, but I still managed to christmatize the house. I didn't manage to take any pictures, but i'm not a miracle worker. I met with Brenda after I dropped the princesses off, and I came home to this:

baby boy hasn't been working as much lately, and he's been so helpful. he put the Christmas tree up yesterday and the lights today. #awesome

see those three cute heads on the roof? bubba was trying to give me a heart attack. the roof antics lasted long enough for me to get a picture and then it was time to come back in.

darlaina texted that evening and asked if i'd like to go walking. always. so when matt got home at 8:30, we headed out. we don't have the best of luck walking, we 3. last time we were assaulted by a mosquito spraying truck, and this time we met with a deluge. it went from sprinkling to monsoon in about 60 seconds. Jodie ran us through several backyards (we were on the green) and we finally made it sloppy wet and cracking up to her house, where she drove us the 1/4 mile home. it also happened to be bulk trash pickup day, so Jodie scored 2 rocking chairs and we procured a small fake tree for the church. I call that an eventful evening stroll.

bubba was asked to go to an iron chef night at the nelsons. they had to use ground beef and then some items from food storage. chris made his famous beef and potato tacos and came in first place.

the boys and their entries. I heard joseph's spaghetti was a close second. raising these boys up right!

in other news:

 

*frank's has been put into a small reading group for a little extra help. I know she struggles, and mrs. g said she might put her in, and I was good with it, but when it actually happened it hurt my heart a little. of course we never want to see our kids struggle, so that's hard. but then I worry about what she thinks. does she think she's not smart? does she even know it's because she's behind? what do other kids think/say? we've been talking it up about how lucky she is to get extra reading time with ms. pepper, so she seems happy about it. i'm pretty sure she's got some add or adhd going on. I read a book once that described our brains as a complex downtown of a busy city, with one way streets, and lots of twists and turns, and that in a persons brain with executive functioning difficulties their traffic cop is asleep, so it's chaos. I see that when she reads and writes. I need to find out how to wake those lazy traffic cops awake, preferably without medication, and then figure out how to keep them awake, or at least give her coping skills to deal with it. sweet frankie froggie. 

*operation no stress December is underway. I decided a few weeks ago to make it so. it's not a surprise that Christmas is December 25. the biggest aspect of no stress December is organization and 0 procrastination. so far, so good!

*addie and I started anne of Avonlea. so good!

*that's all.

elms field trip

more on Williamsburg to come, but for now - field trip! no rest for the fun crowd, we rolled into town around 10 Monday night and were field tripping by 9 the next morning.

the school district owns the land at elms and each year most of the classes field trip there. so that means this was at least my third trip (seems like there should be more though?). they do such a good job that it's all good. we learned about the wetlands (and it was actually very informative) and pollution. our experiment:

it was a rainy day (lucky us!) but thankfully we didn't get too wet at all.

we did a bird hike and were told we were the quietest group in our guides two years. but she probably tells all the chaperones that.

bird watching.

then we did a hike around, which was my favorite part. beautiful even on a gloomy day.

we had elders and brian (future elder) over for a breakfast dinner and they left us with a fun lesson.

they had to balance two forks on a toothpick coming out of a salt shaker.

the boys tried and gave up, and then addie wanted a turn. look at that focus.

finally elder shank showed us how it worked. pretty cool. with Christ as our foundation, we can find the balance. good message.

it was elder shank's last night in somd, so we sent this to their mommas. I know I hope I will get lots of pictures when chris heads out. :)

matt and I watched making a murderer and shook our heads in disbelief the rest of the night. craziness.