Moving Week

12-May through 18-May

Do you ever wake up like this? Evidently I do sometimes.

The question is, how did I extricate myself without waking her up? I'm pretty sure I have no idea!

Goodbye to our home in Colonial Beach! We loved it here!

Hello to our home not far away near Lake Anna.

The kids are signed up for little league in Fredericksburg. We've had a number of games already, but I kept taking videos instead of pictures. Here's finally a picture of Eliza (in coach pitch) with the catchers gear on!

"Hey Eliza!" "Dad, I'm in the middle of a game." #thatdad

This girl's cheeks! So fun to squeeze!

Kids have loved wildlife. This was a frog near the house they insisted on taking a picture of. We see lots of squirrels and frogs and fireflies, much more than we did back home!

We went to Monticello this week, home of Thomas Jefferson. Like Mount Vernon, it was amazing. I liked the tours better here, in fact. Monticello is also run independent of any tax-funding. It is well preserved and beautiful! Also like Mount Vernon, Here at Monticello, they didn't make out Thomas Jefferson to be something he was not. He's neither vilified nor put on a pedestal. He was a person, a human. He had challenging decisions and moral dilemmas to face. It's easy to judge others, especially those of different cultural values. I feel Monticello and Mount Vernon both did an admiral job at encouraging a withholding of judgment and a viewing of these men as people who faced challenging times and circumstances.

Reflection pool was actually the "fresh fish for the kitchen" pond.

This place is gorgeous!

Sometimes she wants to be the rider, and sometimes, just get out of her way!

Benjo giving Mom a flower--CUTE!

The kids enjoyed playing in some of the tall grass. Love these smiles!

Thomas Jefferson *loved* to experiment with agriculture. He had a lot of failures, but also many crops and specific types of crop are common in the United States thanks to his work.

Thomas Jefferson's grave in a family plot just down the hill from the home.

Mount Vernon

Thursday, 09-May

I went on another run this morning. Yay for me! I think that makes three times since we've been at Colonial Beach. That's what, once per week? Okay, so not that impressive. Nevertheless, it's nice running along the beach, if you can call it that.

A panoramic of Colonial Beach on the Potomac

~~~ This is the point where I dropped keeping the blog up to date. We're done with roadschooling now, but I still want to capture it here. I'll likely make each post cover a week of our adventures. ~~~

Mount Vernon was impressive. We could have been there two days to really take everything in. They have a fantastic museum there and see over a million guests per year. It is maintained by a charitable organization and doesn't receive a penny of tax money to maintain it. It's a nice feeling to get to choose to donate to something significant.

Map and Sign

The entrance path -- so pretty!

Cute kiddos

An awesome experience in the museum--you received information on a situation Washington faced, had era people (e.g. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, etc) to advise you in different ways, then you made a decision. Then you find out what choice Washington actually made.

The lovely home from the back. Unfortunately the front was covered in scaffolding as they were doing some preservation work.

Gorgeous view of the Potomac

The ice house, because one of George Washington's favorite desserts was ice cream. A man of good taste! But that's only part one of this picture. The sign explains some of the work done by slaves to fill it. I appreciate how they don't shy away from sensitive topics here. George Washington is neither deified nor demonized, he's simply presented as a man in his place at his time period who did what he did.

This view is from the bottom side, but from the top side, you don't even realize there's a wall there! The name of these walls cracked me up, which I suppose is appropriate.

Pretty gardens there maintained as they would have been.

Active blacksmith's shop.

We went down to the mill and watched flour get made right in front of us. Cool process.

Friday we went to the local library. Love that place! So convenient! And then Saturday was a baseball day, first for the kids who had little league games, then for all of us as we headed up to Camden Yards to watch the Orioles at home.

Our cute little library!

Camden Yards from our seats way up high.

As in, WAY up high, the highest! We had some chili winds coming through that fence and were glad we'd brought our blankets. 

Amy didn't care for picture taking, she just wanted to watch the game, but she humors me.

Play

Wednesday, 8-May

We haven't had any field trips the last few days, just some at home play, school, and of course, baseball.

Eliza's first game, here she fields a ball and gets it to first base quite well.

At her sibling's games, Eliza makes friends on the playground. "Dad, take a picture with my new friend?" "What's her name?" "I don't know! She's just my friend!" :-)

A pretty braid on this girl.

Just chillin' playing cards.

So this rabbit on my morning run. I'd probably see such a lot more often if I, you know, went for morning runs more often!

Ice cream, Plays, and Ticks, Oh My!

Friday, May 3rd

While I was out shopping with Rebekah on Wednesday, things got pretty exciting at home. Noel became the first of our children to get a tick bite! She was in the shower when she found it on the side of her back. She kinda, or maybe not-so-kinda, freaked out.

Bonnie burned its bum with a match and got it to start crawling out, then pulled it out the rest of the way.

Meanwhile at the grocery store...

Yesterday (Thursday), Bonnie took the four oldest to see the play of Cinderella at King George high school.

Some happy girls much?

Today we got some good Library time.

I love this Climb in and Read space. Amy obviously does too!

George Washington's Birthplace

Tuesday, 30-April

Yesterday (Monday), we were invited to a book group of homeschoolers that read some Charlotte Mason, a homeschool thought leader back around the turn of the 20th century. We let our kids play together and had a good time reading, discussing, and chatting.

Today we went to George Washington's birthplace just south of Colonial Beach on the Potomac. It's run by the National Parks Service. We don't have a lot of pictures because, well, there really wasn't much to see. It was kind of... weird, really.

The focus of the place wasn't George Washington at all, but how we remember or commemorate him. While that might seem nice, it made the whole experience about us, not him. We didn't really learn anything about him, his character, his history, but we learned what various other people have done to remember his life.

I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but it felt odd to us.

Eliza in a George Washington portrait

Benjo in a Park Ranger portrait

A footbridge across an inlet of the Potomac.

Playing baseball with sticks, trees, and pine cones.

Despite the odd experience, we had a good time eating lunch and playing together.

Six Flags DC

Saturday, 27-April

It's been a while since we've been able to make use of our Six Flags passes. We were excited to go again! It turned out to be a day in high 60's temperature wise. I'm not sure if this is why there were less people or people just haven't gotten in their minds yet that Six Flags is an option, but it was very much not crowded. We love that!

Gotta have a picture with the Jelly Belly!

I love Amy's smile in this pic!

She loves the big roller coasters and the merry-go-round. This girl loves it all!

My turn on the merry-go-round with Rebekah

We have to take turns going on some rides since Ben and Rebekah often aren't big enough.

Bugs Bunny!!!!

Toward the end of the day, we had a bit of a... not a scare, but a concern. Eliza somehow lost her six-flags pass. Bonnie went to member-services and it turns out that to get a new one, we would have to go, in person, to the six flags where we originally purchased them. That's Atlanta, Georgia for us! Dumb!

After much prayer and searching, I made a trip back to member services and someone had just turned in Eliza's membership pass! Whew!

The passes provide our meals for in the park, too, and we were not far from dinner time. Looking back, the member-services employee could have been, well, a lot more helpful. But she wasn't.

And quite frankly, most six-flags employees aren't that helpful. I don't think they treat their employees that great. We've seen some pretty rude treatment which I've blown off as someone having a bad day, but when it becomes a standard, even between different parks, it's no longer just a bad day issue.

We have yet to go to a park where getting food hasn't had some sort of debacle. This time, it turns out that they stop accepting cards for dinner purchases after 7:15, even though they're still open and serving dinners. Even if the park closes at 7, they serve dinners until 7:15, but when it closes at 8, or 10, or whenever, it doesn't matter, dinner cards are done at 7:15. This isn't true of all six-flags parks nation-wide, just this one. We were literally *in line* when the last dinner order was accepted.

I spoke with a manager, explaining we had a family of 7, all hungry, all who had been in the rather slow line when 7:15 hit, and she was willing to give us our meals. Bless her.

But really, Six Flags is quickly reaching Comcast status in my eyes.

We enjoy the rides, but we'll probably not renew these passes at the end of the year.

Community Movie Night

Friday, 26-April

We're loving Colonial Beach! Being right around the corner from the library is very nice! We go there pretty much every day we don't have a field trip. Well, at least I do, and Amy often comes to do her individual school work there. The rest come too after their school work is done.

I don't know if I've mentioned but currently, I'm in charge of breakfasts for the familam. I used to do things like pancakes, waffles, and french toast, but unless you have a large griddle (and even if you do), those take For.Ev.Errrrrrrrrr!! Now I usually stick to cereal, oatmeal with fruit, dutch babies (aka german pancakes), and oatmeal muffins. The muffins are probably my favorite.

And check it out, I even did a nice presentation of it! With a... paper plate in the middle. Whatevs!

Tonight we found out that the a group was hosting a movie night for kids at the local community. Free root beer (home-brew, it was yummy!) and popcorn, as well as some fun activities. They had some books as door prizes which, since our kids made up half the attendees, we won a few!

The kids and their artwork

The movie was Hook. It'd been a while since I'd seen it--it was a fun time.