Mounts Washmore and Foldmore

It's a long weekend.  

Hooray for Washington's birthday.  

Thanks, George.  I appreciate you being born in a time of the year that a holiday makes all the difference.  

Caroline had her Company Showcase on Friday night and did great.  They still have some things to work on before the first competition in a couple weeks - but wow.  It was impressive. 

I cried watching Caroline tap dance.  She looked like she was having so much fun.  

She lights up on stage.  It was wonderful to watch.  

The boys sat through the 3 hour show with the assistance of a bag of library books.  

We're starting to see the fruits of the exposure to limited electronics.  

Many of the other children there were acting out or were isolated in a world of cell phone games.  The boys watched dancing when the wanted to (Nate like the older girls- imagine that) and read when they wanted to.  They were quiet.  

It was Friday night - they were toast.  

And they still hung in there.  

A good night for everyone.  

On Saturday we girded up for Adventure and headed down to Yorktown.  

Unfortunately, we miscalculated the traffic and it took us 5 hours to get there.  

Ugh.  

The kids did fine in the car - listening to "Hamilton", reading books and doing the Junior Ranger activities.  

The battlefield was amazing.  

We had been focusing on the Civil War, but thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda, our focus has expanded to the Revolution.  

It is SO.  Freaking.  Cool.  

One of my friends is an archaeologist and has done research down in Yorktown and gave us the lay of the land.  

The Visitor Center is being updated.  The museum part is great - it is a model of a type of ship that would have been in the Chesapeake at the time of the battle.  It's built to scale.  Anyone taller than 5'3" couldn't stand up in it.  The floors were uneven so you felt like you were on the water.  The kids adored it!  

The Ranger Talk we went on lasted 90 minutes and was enthralling.  The Ranger was passionate and engaging.  

Kudos to the National Parks Service.  They hit it out of the park at Yorktown.  

Doing their research in the Visitor Center

On 10/10/1781 it took the man on the $10 bill and his command 10 minutes to take Redoubt 10 from the British troops.
The kids were excited to see evidence of many of the characters they have learned about from "Hamilton".  

Showing off their new badges.  

We explored Yorktown a little and stopped for dinner.  

The weather was glorious.  Who can turn down beach time in February?

We got home very late on Saturday night - so yesterday was a day of rest.  

And now I deal with Mounts Foldmore and Washmore.  

 

Yup.

Remember when I said a couple weeks ago that there wasn't much going on?
I lied.
Between business trips, baby sitting, dress rehearsals, altar serving, community service, Blue Knights, Little Flowers, fort building, Aquarium adventuring, dance class,  costume alterations, regular homework, additional projects on D-Day, planning for Lent, Bible Study, asthma attacks, bouts of strep throat, making regular meals, doing bulk freezer meals, cleaning house, washing clothes, maintaining some semblance of order in this chaos and trying to raise good humans, I can't lie.
I'm frigging exhausted.

The weather has been nice for the past couple of days, so we've been punting homework to play outdoors.
We're at the stage now where I can be indoors and let the kids play outdoors on their own.
It's a new level of freedom.
For all of us.
I'm considering the few quiet moments I'm allowed as time off for good behavior.

This little girl has orientation for middle school soon.
What?!?!  She was just born!