7QT: Trip Blogging Edition (plus random stuff)

 

Hi everyone.  Mind if I finish up my DC trip blogging quick takes style, and combine it with some other stuff that has been in my head lately?  Okay then.

(If you're interested, you can read part 1 of our trip blog here and part 2 here.)

 

--- 1 ---

So let's see, where did I leave off?  Oh, yes, we finished up Monday at the National Geographic Museum.  On Monday evening we left the DC area to drive down to Williamsburg.  We left around 6 PM but traffic was so insane that night that we didn't end up arriving at our Williamsburg hotel until nearly 10 PM.  On the way, M and I discussed the fact that I hadn't kept up with work in the past few days-- I had thought I would have an hour here and there on Saturday and Sunday but it just didn't happen that way.  We began to discuss ways that I could get my work done for the week before the Wednesday deadline.  The girls slept fitfully on the trip that night but were so excited to be at the hotel when we arrived that they didn't really settle down until almost 11.  After four days in a row of busy sight-seeing and a long day, this was I think the high point of exhaustion for all of us in the trip.

The next day we woke up and enjoyed our delicious hotel breakfast (Embassy Suites for the win!) and decided that M would take the girls on a short, 1-2 hour jaunt to "real Jamestown"** while I stayed at the hotel and worked the morning away.

**For those of you who have never visited Jamestown, there are actually two locations you can visit: 1) what we call "real Jamestown" is the actual location of the first settlement, which is now a very small museum and archeological dig and 2) what we call "fake Jamestown" which is a living history museum-- not on the actual site of the settlement-- where they have re-created replicas of the Jamestown fort, a Powhatan village, and the three ships that sailed from England.

Boy am I sad that I missed this day.

 

The girls wore their "Mary and Laura dresses" that Grandma made for them to wear to all the living history museums on our trip.  It worked out perfectly because it was well over 80 degrees that day and we didn't pack any warm weather clothes.

 

These girls loooooooove the story of Pocahontas.

 

This X had some sort of significance, but M took these pictures so I'm not sure what it was.  Ask him! :)

M and I last visited "real Jamestown" when I was about 36 weeks pregnant with N.  It is one of our favorite places.  Quiet, beautiful, and out of the way of regular touristy crowds.  I'm sad I missed it this time around, but we will be back for sure!!

--- 2 ---

After the crew returned from "real Jamestown" we had some pbjs for lunch in the hotel room, and then I put the girls down for naps.  Daddy went for a run while I finished the 30 minutes of work I had left, and then I crashed with the girls.  We all ended up sleeping for almost 3 hours that afternoon.  Ahhhhhhhhh.

We had a swim in the hotel pool when we woke up.  I wish I had a picture of L holding her cast high above her head while M and I took turns carrying her around the pool.  She was in heaven regardless of the inconvenience and the other two girls were swimming like little fish.

I took the girls back to the room for showers and Daddy walked down the road a few blocks to Chipotle and got us dinner.  On the way back in to the room he stopped at the happy hour (offered every night at Embassy Suites! yessss!) and got me my free glass of wine.  We snuggled in with the girls and watched a few episodes of Slim Goodbody.  That was a really fun and restful evening!

--- 3 ---

Next and final day: "fake" Jamestown.  Equally fun and awesome.

Taking a nap in the captain's quarters

Waiting for the introductory film to start

Eating our sandwiches by the ship fountain and flag courtyard.  Such fun!

We wrapped up our day there stopping by a Williamsburg frozen custard place and then heading back to DC area to spend one more night with Ben and Beth close to the airport.  We were up early the next morning flying back home.  What an amazing week!

These girls are definitely troopers and it is far easier to travel with them now than it was, say, a year ago, but it's still a big challenge keeping everyone fed with healthy food, toileted, rested and happy on the road.  We were definitely all exhausted and ready to be home by the end.  I could write a whole other post on things we learned and might do differently for the next trip, and maybe I will soon before they leave my head.  We do have some great memories to look back on, and visiting such wonderful places just makes us all excited for the time that we can come back again!

--- 4 ---

When we got back and I was thinking about diving back in to our homeschool routine, I kind of got a severe case of the good old "I'm a failure at homeschooling and my house is a mess and everything is disorganized and what am I doing wrong" feeling.  So I spent part of last weekend writing out this schedule.

I basically just wrote down all of the things that seem to be slipping by us these days: cleaning old leftovers out of the fridge, folding laundry, making appointments or other phone calls, etc.  I inserted them all into the cracks of our week, hoping to prove that, if only I "wasn't lazy" and spent every waking hour of my day doing something, maybe I would be closer to keeping this family organized.

(Plus, if it was all written out and planned ahead of time, I wouldn't have to spin my wheels during those rare moments of free time and waste time trying to choose what to accomplish first.)

I also made a pledge to be on my iPhone less.  I don't really do much random surfing, since I don't have social media accounts.  I do read blogs or the news occasionally.  But my main distractor is email.  And on my phone, it's a real time waster since I don't actually reply to any emails because I don't have the time to type on that tiny keyboard.  I just read them and file them away for later, and usually stress myself out about how to respond to them.  I figured I could save myself some time if I just didn't even look at my email until the "later" came when I was actually able to sit down at my laptop and respond.

Annnnnnyway, it's been a week on this schedule and with me keeping my phone in my purse all day, and... I've proven to myself that I'm not lazy.  Hooray!  Even with my phone in my purse, and even with everything all written down and planned, there are things that don't get done in the day.  Things happen with kids and the schedule has to get moved around, or something takes us longer than planned... I think there just aren't enough hours in the day, and I'm doing the best I can.  Despite the fact that I didn't accomplish much more than I normally do, I felt better about myself.  So it was a good experiment.

--- 5 ---

Oooookay, speaking of good time management, I spent way too long on those first four takes, and we need to be off to Scouting For Food soon, so these last two are gonna have to be really truly "quick" takes.  Here we go.

--- 6 ---

Did I share with you this photo of our photo from the booth at the National Geographic Museum?  No, I don't think I did.

--- 7 ---

The other day, C took a box of free floss we got from the dentist's office out of the cabinet.  She pulled a length of floss but didn't tear it, and set the floss box down on the ground.  She pulled the string and started dragging the floss box around the house behind her, saying, "I have a fwoss dog."

The end.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!