Philly Trip: Day 4......Colonial Williamsburg!

Wednesday, May 29th

This was definitely one of the stops I was personally looking forward to the most. And if I were clever enough to through in a couple more -ly suffixes in that first sentence, you know I would.

Because we had gotten in late after a long drive and an exhausting, but tremendously fun pool time, and because the day was going to be hot and long, we took our time getting out the hotel in the morning. Consequently, we got in the van at 10:24. It was already 85 degrees and sunny.

While the Jedi checked us out of the hotel. I took pictures of the kids. Cause that's what I do.

In the parking lot of the visitor's center, we drove up and down the rows spotting license plates for our traditional state license plate spotting game. Between the ones we had spotted on the highway over memorial day weekend and the ones we found in the parking lot, we only needed seven or so plates to have spotted all fifty states.

This has nothing to do with license plates, but someone was nice enough to get a picture of the four of us together in front of the visitor's center. It's the only picture I have of us together from the whole trip, so it's precious...

Colonial Williamsburg was indeed hot. But it was also way cool. I loved it. (I think it was a little hot, and a little too long for the kids to completely love it.)

Trip tips for others planning on visiting (things we had wished we had known).

• Hats are a must. Get a sun hat or a ball cap for each person in your family. Wear them. There are lots of big shady trees, but on a bright sunny summer day in a southern state, you will want a hat to shade your eyes and head.
• Sunscreen is also a must.
• Water bottles are allowed in the village. Bring at least one for each person and plan on refilling it. Carry a backpack or two to put them in.
• Admission tickets are expensive BUT, if you are traveling on a tight budget, tickets aren't required to walk around the town, enter some of the shops, or watch the outdoor dramas. Tickets are required for the shuttle bus, most of the participatory and demonstration shops, and any indoor tours, dramas, or events. We did tickets and I found them worth it, but if tickets were outside of our budget, a partial experience would be better than none.
• Food is also expensive. I don't know what the rules or regulations are about bringing in food. Certainly no one inspected any of our bags at any time. A huge cooler on wheels wouldn't work on the crushed shell walkways anyway, but some lunch items in backpacks would probably go unnoticed and be fine.
• The cool stuff closes at 5. (And well before 5, you and your family will be beat.) Plan on getting there early and take a mid day break if needed.

Our favorite things in Colonial Williamsburg--

Sweetling got a tri-cornered hat to add to her collection. (Photo in the gardens of the Governor's Mansion. We started our time in Williamsburg with a tour of the mansion. I highly recommend it.)

Toa of Boy, and Sweetling too, got to help stomp the mud for bricks. (There were lots of trade craftsmen demonstrating how things were made and done at the time. We visited many of them...but this was, for obvious reasons, a boy favorite.)

Mommy loved the costumed characters.

They stayed in character all day. They would walk down the street discussing issues of the times with each other.

One gentleman advised me to make sure I took Sweetling to her harpsichord lesson, since that was the way to ensure she could be matched with a good husband.

The Jedi loved the fife and drum parade at the end of the day. (Which we only have a video of. Videos don't load as gracefully on my blog as I would like, so I'm just going to save myself the frustration of messing with.)

We left Colonial Williamsburg at 5:58 and found a Dairy Queen to get some Blizzards (and a few chicken fingers and onion rings as a light dinner.) I couldn't manage even a small blizzard, so I ordered a "mini" Blizzard. Toa of Boy patted me on the back and said, "That's ok, Mommy. You are just a cute little thing."

(Read from the beginning.)
(Go back to day three.)

Philly Trip: Day 3...... Waves of Fun

Tuesday, May 28th

This morning we managed to roll out of the hotel room at 9:19. Still not fabulous time, but there were extenuating circumstances that I'm not going to elaborate on here. In Canton, the sky was overcast and the temperature was a cool 63.  The forecast called for rain all the way through West Virginia.

This did not bode well for our intended recreational "layover".

Fortunately the skies were mostly clear by lunchtime. We sopped at Ridgeview BBQ, because it had made some bbq book. The ribs were cooked to what the general public (those rubes) tends to prefer....fall off the bone tender. Sadly, even I found them to be over done, and I like my ribs a little too cooked by KCBS standards.

Our lunchtime disappointment aside, the most important feature of the day was still on our travel menu....Waves of Fun Waterpark in Hurricane, West Virginia.

THAT was a huge success!

It generated my favorite quote of the trip to-date....

"I've been pantsed by a pool!"

Admission was extremely reasonable. The grounds were spacious and well kept. Fun 80s music played over the loud speakers. (Sweetling called the music "retro", but as her loving mother, I shall forgive her applying that adjective to the tunes of my teenage years). The water slides had little to no lines and were super fun, and the giant wave pool sent lots of varieties of waves through the water on frequent regular intervals.

We purposefully left the camera in the car so that we could all enjoy the pool. But I grabbed a couple of pictures of the park, and right before we left, the Jedi went out to the car and brought the camera in to make one video of the waves. He caught the tail end of a wave cycle, and the kids and I were starting to wear down, so we had moved to a gentle section of the wave pool. (The biggest of the waves knocked the Jedi off his feet). 

We were there for three hours, though we could have easily stayed for five to six hours and not grown bored. As it was, we left at 6pm with a lot of driving still ahead of us.

At my request, we stopped a little chain restaurant called "Biscuit House" for dinner. I don't know where in West Virginia we were, but I had seen a couple signs for them at various exits. I knew we were in the right place, when we pulled into the parking lot and the back of the restaurant had a small dumpster labelled "Used Cooking Oil".  I got a "Mountaineer" biscuit sandwich while Toa got the "Mary B" and the Jedi got a "Herd". I should have got a side of grits. Sweetling and Eswin each got a side bowl of fried apples. The biscuits were big and hot and flaky and delicious. Everyone enjoyed their dinner.

In the last minute, unplanned scramble that this was, I had neglected to grab a module or prep any materials for a solo game for the Jedi. In the car earlier, I had sent a frantic email to Christopher Robin, and she emailed me a module. I saved the pdf to my phone, and was able to run an adventure for the Jedi in the hours between West VA and Colonial Williamsburg.

I have no idea what time it was when we arrived at the hotel.

(go back to Days 1 and 2)
(go forward to Day 4)

To Philly....through Canton

Day One (Sunday, May 26th)

We left Cincinnati late in the morning. Very late in the morning. 11:17 worth of late in the morning. contrast that with our California trip a couple of years ago where we managed to pull out of the driveway at 6:18 a.m.

This trip is not going to be the clockwork ballet that the California trip was.

Our late departure caused us to scrap our first intended lunch stop (Holy Smoke in Columbus). Instead we grabbed Wendy s through a drive-thru and ate in the car.

Not a nice trade, my precious. Not a nice trade at all.

Once in Canton, we realized we had little to complain about. The Jedi's sister and nephew had just flown in from California, and had been in airports or on planes for some nightmarish number of hours and hadn't eaten in over 12 hours.

We all went to Friendly's.

The Dungeon Lord and his family joined us and, after dinner, the Dungeon Lord and the Jedi polished off a crowd pleaser with ease.

The Dungeon Lord and his family are now renting Nana's house. We headed over there after dinner. That was difficult for the Jedi, though the Dungeon Lord had done a wonderful job of renovating the old house.

When the Jedi was in high school and in college, he and his friends had gathered round the table in the kitchen extension to play D&D. For at least part of that time, his toddler nephew would sit in Uncle Jedi's lap and roll dice. Now that the nephew is all grown up and has done three tours of duty in Afghanistan (where he and other service men would play rpgs when the power went out and it was 120 degrees), the Jedi thought it would be cool to invite Nephew to join to join us for a game in the old place. I volunteered to run a Pathfinder module, so that the Jedi, the Nephew, and the Dungeon Lord could all play through the adventure together. Sweetling decided she wanted to join the game as well. We stayed up way too late, we had a great time, and a hat of disguise was used extremely creatively to achieve the party's objective with minimal bloodshed.  

Day Two (Monday, Memorial Day, May 27th)

Jedi's Sister and Nephew joined us at the cemetery to decorate Bapa's grave.

I had picked up and brought 48 small flags along. Last year, our family had found an older, minimally maintained cemetery in our area. We took some hand trowels and small grass shears and flags and found, cleared off, and decorated the graves of veterans. However, the cemetery Nana and Bapa are in was well kept and flags had already been placed to mark the veterans' graves.

After hugs and farewells to Sister and Nephew, our family stayed and walked through the cemetery to look for any veterans' graves that might have been missed. Sweetling and Toa of Boy each took a handful of flags and fanned out on their own. They each found a few graves to decorate. Toa of Boy also found a rabbit home and brought me over to view his discovery. We decided that a cemetery would be a great place for a rabbit to live.

We left the cemetery just a little before lunch and picked up Pizza Oven to take to Mama M's house. We stayed and had a pleasant visit over there for a while.

My brother and his family had come down with a stomach bug, so our trip to drive out to visit their home in East Nowhere got cancelled and we had the afternoon and evening free. We took a nap at the hotel and then drove around and found a mini golf course. The facility actually had three levels of courses and we chose the "Just for Fun" course. Toa of Boy got two holes--in-one! His first ever! The Jedi and I each had a couple ourselves. Sweetling did amazingly well....but her ball hopped over the hole, and she was "robbed" from claiming a hole-in-one. Apparently I went into a temporary brain coma and forgot to grab any pictures of the course. Not even one of the ball eating giraffe. (I grabbed this one from the ProPutt website).

We picked up Chinese for dinner, took it back to our room, and watched Rat Race.

Trip Planning: Colonial Williamsburg

We are spending the second day of our trip in Colonial Williamsburg. I know one day isn't enough to see and experience everything there....but it's one day better than no days! So, a day it is!

I pulled up the calendar of events for the days that we'll be there, and I'm going to have each child pick two events which they'd like to see, and have each adult pick one event. Then we'll try to plan our ramblings through town around those events. Here's a printable map.

For my event, I'm picking....

nothing specific! (shocker, I know....) I really want to watch the short little dramas that play throughout the day at various places in the city. There are three in particular that seem cool, and they all run from 4pm to 5pm

• 4-4:10 Capital Green South --The American turncoat, now British Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold, seizes Williamsburg. Redcoats raise the British flag over the Capitol and announce the rules of occupation.
• 4:40-4:45 Raleigh Tavern Steps--It's late September of 1781. The Allied American Army has been gathering in Williamsburg, eager to engage the British. As the time to march grows near, the general addresses the citizens concerning the impending battle at Yorktown. 
• 4:50-5:10 Market Square North (behind Courthouse)-- September 28, 1781--Local militia, with fife and drum fanfare and cannon salutes, march in review while the general addresses the citizens of Williamsburg in preparation for the siege of Yorktown.

Toa of Boy isn't interested in the dramatizations. Toa just wants things he can *do*. So Toa picks the following locations to visit, which are come and go--

• The Brickmaker 
• The Market Square
• The Palace Green
•  The Public Gaol

The observant reader will notice I've already violated my two picks per child, on per adult guideline. Very good, observant reader. 

Dinner Conversation

The tone of the conversation is not atypical for our home. As always, names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Me: I had lunch at Christopher Robin's house today. Would you like to know what she fixed me? (It really isn't a yes/no question, so I just continue talking.) It was delicious. She made paninis on calipso bread with asiago cheese, roast turkey, mayonnaise, dijon mustard, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and red peppers.

Toa of Boy: Ewww!

The Jedi: Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM.

Toa of Boy: It sounded good until you said artichoke hearts. That's just gross.

Me: You've never even tried artichoke hearts. They are delicious.

The Jedi: Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM

Toa of Boy: I didn't even know fish had hearts.

The Jedi: Ba-BUM...The artichoke heart is coming down your street.!...Ba-BUM....

Sweetling: You're thinking of anchovies.

Me: Artichokes are a vegetable.

The Jedi: Ba-BUM...The artichoke heart is outside your door!....Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM...

Me: And yes, fish have hearts.

Toa of Boy: Oh. Maybe that's not so bad then. I thought it would be slimey.

The Jedi: The artichoke heart is coming to eat you up!...Ba-BUM, Ba-BUM

More yummy recipes

Will I make them? Who knows, but I like the looks of them!

Triple Chocolate Butterscotch Bread

 Forget zucchini bread. This is where it's *at*

 Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies

Though Sweetling said, "WHAT?" in response to these cookies, nevertheless, I think they look fun.

Chocolate Cobbler

Again, yum.

 Bananas Foster French Toast

You might notice a lot of sweet recipes hitting my blog tonight. It's like a pattern.

 Reese's Pieces Blondies

Because I love my husband.

Sloppy Joe Squares

Another one for the Jedi.

 Snickerdoodle Bars

See how much I love him?

Philly Trip Plan: Day One Possibilities

The first day of our trip sees us leaving Cincy and driving to Williamsburg VA.

That is NINE hours of drive time and looks like this:

I'm back in research mode, looking for at least one midway stop to break up the long drive and provide some interest and adventure in the day.

One option is Covington VA. It's 5 hours and 43 minutes from Cincy.  A quick buzz through trip advisor isn't shouting out with any awesome stuff.

Hawk's Nest State Park in West Virginia is almost exactly at the halfway part of the drive. This might be a real possibility to get out and stretch our legs some. It has a visitor's center for kids, a lookout point over the river....and an aerial tram car. The Jedi (who hates heights) says, "Yeah....you're funny."




The city of Charleston WV is also near the halfway point. But once again, I'm not seeing any cool kid friendly stop. Coonskin Park is near Charleston, but it's a fairly standard county park.

Lansing is close to en route. It has a bunch of Adventures on the Gorge, such as ziplines and white water rafting. But I need a quick, easy attraction. Orb the Gorge would be fun, but a bit too pricy for a 'travel diversion'.

 Huntington. There's a historic farm and village there, but I think that we need something active for Toa. We'll be doing enough history on the trip as it is.

 And Fayetteville....which has a BridgeWalk, certain to be another hit with the Jedi. It's not my fault that the cool mountain attractions are up high. But in this case, the bridgewalk is a whopping $69 per person! I shall keep looking.

 And Beckley....which has a tour of a historic coal mine, described as "not for the claustraphobic." This has gotten me another *look* from the Jedi...who is, in fact, claustraphobic.

That makes me 0 for 7.... crap.

But the Jedi hits a home run by finding Waves of Fun.

Giant water slides for the win!

Unschooling Morning

Our dear neighbors lost a grandson over the weekend. Having just gone through a death in our family this winter, both the Jedi and myself wanted to attend the service this morning.

I left the children home with Mama. They each had a list of schoolwork. I told them that they could do their school work, or work on any creative project of their choosing. They both opted for the creative project.

Sweetling put in a few more hours on her plush TakoLuka. She's creating it from scratch, no pattern or directions. Just the Japanese youtube videos she likes as a guide.

Toa of Boy is creating a coin operated Lego arcade. So far he has two vending machines which accept Lego "money" and then *actually function* to dispense little cylindrical Lego soda cans. He also has a photo booth (non-functional) and a claw machine complete with prizes, a dangling claw, and two joystick controls. He is a little disappointed that he can't make the claw machine operational, but I told him not to worry about it. You can't get prizes out of the real claw machines either.

If I were cooler, I'd be able to take pictures and get hem from my phone or my camera to my computer and then to my blog. Alas, I am only a dork..not a techno geek.

Geek:  You understand, create and fix Really Cool Stuff

Nerd:   You understand and collect Really Cool Stuff

Dork:  You are confused by Really Cool Stuff

On the agenda for the afternoon, making white chicken chili and Texas sheet cake to take to another co-op family. And probably more unschooling.

Pinterest is a Pain

It's true.

And I'm saying it.

I don't like Pinterest.

I'm going back to my tried and true method of putting links and pictures in a blog post for myself.

There should be a rule similar to, "don't go to the grocery store when you're hungry,"  is....
"don't surf food recipe sights when you've got the munchies."

Everything looks good.

Rather than spam my Facebook wall with links that I'll never be able to find again (really, Facebook needs the ability to search a wall)...I'm posting them here.

Slow Cooked Triple Cheddar Mac & Cheese.

Downside, it uses a can of cheddar cheese soup. Alternatives must be experimented with.

 Jalapeno Popper Dip

There is no downside to jalapeno poppers.

 Pepperoni Pull-Apart

Making this on Friday to go with a family night activity.

CopyCat Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce

This is here because Toa loves chicken alfredo. It's one of his favorite dinners. The rest of us are sick to death of jarred alfredo sauces.

Monster Cookie Dough Dip

No other words are needed.

 Crispy Cheddar Chicken

 Mmmmmm.....