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.