On Tuesday, I had some work obligations that kept us in the house all day. To help make the day survivable, we bought the new Monsters University movie to watch after breakfast – it was hilarious to watch them so captivated by the movie and unaware of their surroundings!
We have a grill on the back deck and used it to grill hotdogs (and turkey sausage with cheddar!) for lunch on Monday and Tuesday. It will be so nice to be able to grill out after we move!
After the kids’ nap on Tuesday, we played around at the house and did some chores. They love helping with the laundry, the dishwasher, and the general straightening up. Since we were leaving on Wednesday for a day out (ending with getting Bethany and Noah at the train station), it was important the house was inspection-ready!
Wednesday turned out to be a great day. We had breakfast at home and loaded some things in the car. We’ve only packed clothes for a couple days since washing them is easier than packing a week’s wardrobe. The down side is that, like at home, the laundry never stops! We left a little later than I’d have liked but I wanted to get that last load of laundry on its way.
We went to the “Explore More Discovery Museum” (www.iexploremore.com) in Harrisonburg for a couple hours in the morning – what a hit! Josiah and Lilly both loved it and could have stayed there for hours. I was excited at the quality in the facility’s design, the upkeep of the exhibits, and the amount of effort that had clearly gone into both the overall design and the design of each individual exhibit.
Josiah on the John Deere mower
Lilly learning how to change a tire. If we had come back home after this, I would have taught them how to change the tire on the car (in the warmth of the garage).
Some other pictures of the museum…
Lilly at the news desk. Her report: “Today is windy and chilly!”
I took pictures of each set of bins for art ideas – this was a terrific setup! I wish we’d had time for Bethany to sit down with Lilly in here for a couple hours!
Lilly loved playing in the house/kitchen area. She was adamant that I sit down at the table, dinner was ready!
When I didn’t immediately do as I was told, you can see she up’d the attitude several notches!
We stopped in the science room so I could check it out quickly.
They had a theater at the back which included a backstage dressing area, wings for props/sets, backdrops, curtains, a spotlight, lighting, sound effects, video cameras, face paint (in lieu of makeup) and stools/mirrors, a ticket booth, and movie-theater style chairs. Josiah loved playing in the control booth (“Dad, stop taking pictures – I’m too busy for that”). Lilly wandered backstage, found the “dress-up” bins, and became a fairy (no pictures, sorry!).
I put their names up on the marquee:
Though Noah wasn’t with us, we didn’t want him to be left out:
Lilly and one of the volunteers at the museum sat and used water color pencils to make paintings. At the end of the day, Lilly gave her painting to her friend (running after her calling “wait! wait!”)
Josiah loved the mower…
We were at the museum for about 2 hours and then set off for the next leg of our day of adventure. We stopped at Jimmy Johns for lunch, then drove up (kids napping) to Skyline Drive. Since we had plenty of time before Bethany’s train, I opted to just drive until they woke up. That would have been the single most relaxing part of our vacation had I not needed to go to the bathroom!
Fortunately they didn’t sleep too long and we all got out and “stretched our legs” at the visitor’s center. As we were leaving the visitor’s center to go for our hike, we got two obligatory pictures in one (deer grazing along side the road and a “Skyline Drive” sign):
Our hike took us down the trail to “Dark Hallow Falls”. Bethany and I had done the same hike on our honeymoon and I knew what I was in for. Walking down, more than one person openly laughed at me as the kids were energetic and running down the trail, knowing the pain their exhaustion would cause me soon.
We stopped to sit by the stream a half mile in (we would have reached the falls at 3/4 mile but that would have added an extra half mile round trip that I knew they didn’t have in them). After resting and talking for a bit, we had to get started on our trip back up the trail (the sunset was on our heels). The trip up was every bit as challenging as I’d expected and included a stretch with Josiah on my shoulders and Lilly on my back. It was no surprise at all when we reached the parking lot and saw our car all alone and the sun setting behind the mountains!
Josiah took this one of Lilly and I – thanks buddy!
They came up with this pose on their own when I asked to get a picture of them together.
Which turned quickly turned into this. What you can’t see here is that they are about 6 feet from very cold water on a smooth and steep rock. I can only imagine what the trip back would have been like with two wet kids in the dark!
Lilly took these two pictures of us, we were having a fun time saying “cheese”!
And so our time was over, off we went on our way back…
We stopped at one of the overlooks to look around (and run out the clock) for a little bit as the sun was disappearing. Lilly gets out and runs down the sidewalk proclaiming, “It’s gorgeous!”
[Yes, I put a sweater on her]
These two pictures were from the same overlook
We got back in the car and headed out of the park and over to Culpepper to pick up Bethany. A quick dinner at Chik-Fil-A put us right on schedule. We went over to the train station and were there in time to see the train ahead of hers come and go (which the kids of course loved). About 30 minutes later, as her train was coming in, a freight train also passed us at the station.
Everyone was excited to see each other and the highlight of the day was seeing Noah so excited to hug Lilly and Josiah after missing them for several days.
The drive back to the resort was only about an hour and it was entertaining to listen to the kids catching up (telling some stories but mostly just fooling around and being silly since they’d missed each other).
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