Is it vacation or school?

We headed out from the beach on Monday and although Dave had to get right back to work, the boys and I did NOT. :) We decided to take advantage of being down that direction and stop at Jamestown. It was perfect timing because Joshua is studying American History this year. I am quite aware that we will not live here forever and want to take advantage of our proximity to all of this history while we can.
We've been to Jamestown/Williamsburg/Yorktown before (before Joshua and when he was smaller). But frankly, Jamestown was never our favorite. First, the roads down there are confusing to me. They're all small and windy and nothing leads directly to where I want to go. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find a Hampton Inn (you know my kid and his Hampton Inn obsession...)
And second, there are TWO Jamestowns. Historic Jamestowne and Jamestown Settlement. Up until this week we had only been to Historic Jamestowne. That's the actual archaeological site--you can see the foundations that have been dug up and they have removed over a million artifacts from that site. I must say, though; although a million seems impressive, a lot of it just looks like rocks. ;-) THAT is why I am not an archaeologist....

Anyhooo, this time we decided to go to Jamestown Settlement. It is a private venture, owned by the same foundation that runs Williamsburg, actually. It is one mile from the actual site of the fort. There is a big museum with a film to watch and then recreations of a Powhatan Village, replicas of the three ships (a star for you if you can name them without looking them up...answers at the bottom), and the triangle-shaped fort.

It. was. AWESOME (said in my best Alpaca-cleaning-up Stanley Steamer guy voice...).
Kind of reminiscent of Mount Vernon, which is our favorite museum up here. We watched the film which reinforced what we had already learned in school and taught us some things we didn't know, then we walked around the museum, which is laid out by year and goes up until about 1620, I believe. They have lots of actual artifacts and replicas of things and it is very much hands-on for little curious kiddies.

We walked down the path to the Powhatan village where we saw historic interpreters making corn cakes, tanning skins, and making baskets. Joshua tried his hand at grinding corn with a pestle (in the museum he had just seen examples of the different pestles the Indians, colonists, and Africans would have used) and we explored the different huts. Most had actual animal skins hanging from the walls and all kinds of serving and storage vessels.

We left the village and continued down to the waterfront where we boarded the first, and largest of the three ships (any guess yet?). There were also costumed interpreters on each of the ships, ready to answer any questions you might have and giving out general information about the ships.



short beds that fit an 8-year old




no tall guys on board



The fort was on our way back up to the museum. It was really interesting to see how well they had constructed the buildings and yet kept them in the original design with thatched roofs and such. There were different demonstrations going on inside the fort and once again, everything was "touchable."



no dozing on these pews!



It was a great visit--I feel like we finally cracked the code on Jamestown and this was a productive and fun visit! And now that I think about it, it was a great segue from vacation back to school...I love homeschooling.

Too bad John Smith didn't know about the food court just up the path. They probably could have avoided that whole starvation thing....

(answer: Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery)

Why, oh why, did we come back??

I seriously thought that THIS time at the beach would be easier to leave behind. After all, it wasn't going to be sunny and hot (which I LOVE), the girl wasn't with us, we had things to do back home (school, Scouts, etc.) and it was a short visit.
But that place never fails. It draws us in and holds on tight. Yes, it was cloudy most of the time. Yes, we even wore jackets for our early morning shark-tooth hunting trips. No, I didn't even put on my bathing suit once. And no, Britt's Donuts was not open because it was the off-season. But it was still so wonderfully, peacefully quiet and relaxing. There was a lot of fishing. We took a ferry and did some shopping. We found out that there are cactii (in North Carolina?) and that they are endangered. (oops...) We ate at an outdoor restaurant. We met a retired Air Force guy who'd been coming there with his children and now grandchildren for 40 years. I told him that I hope we're doing that in 40 years, too (only I secretly hope my grandchildren are coming to my house at the beach).
It was hard to come home. Made even harder by the rain and soggy, humid air hanging on everything. For some reason, rain and clouds at the beach are just so much prettier than rain and clouds in Maryland.
Tons of pictures to follow:



surf fishing success



"Yo, Double-G..."

"what on earth is he doing?"




Beautiful stormy sky



The sun did come out.



Joshua set up this beach scene. :)

 

Cast net success

Spoils from our shark tooth-hunting adventures



Lattes and a little work early in the morning



Maybe one day I'll find out....

 Stay tuned for pictures on what we did AFTER the beach....
p.s. (new car is still clean--no fish smell or sand! THAT is success! :)

Is a rainy beach better

than no beach at all?
This weekend is our vacation. The one I've been waiting for all summer--all year, actually. See that picture on the sidebar? I actually view this page at least once a day, even when I'm not posting, just so I can look at that view. We had decided, due to several circumstances, that it wasn't feasible to go this summer. But we really NEEDED to get away. So we found a way to make it work. Booked a long weekend and began counting down the days.
But this weather!
It has been the strangest weather I've seen. And although this week is GORGEOUS, this weekend......blech.
Vacation destination weather:
Friday High 75, 60% chance scattered thunderstorms
Friday night Low 59, 60% chance showers
Saturday High 75, 50% chance thundershowers
Saturday night Low 62, 60% chance showers
Sunday High 77, 40% chance thundershowers
Sunday night Low 62, 30% chance showers

What would you do? Stay home and spend the weekend cleaning up more junk from the recent storms (no rain here this wknd) or take the chance on the beach, knowing a good bit of the time may be spent inside, looking out at the soggy sand and churning water.....?

1st Day of School

Here, a week later, are our first day of school pictures. :)

1st day of school breakfast
it's sooooo early!

1st day of 3rd grade
4'2"  53 lbs

we made white Oreo-truffle caterpillars for our snack

Yum!

Things are off to a great start this year--3rd grade with Joshie and Nick's junior year. I especially like the upper grades because there are so many options and directions to take with the year. Nick is taking a marine biology course, something he's always wanted to do. He's also taking an online web-design class and a great western civ/history of Christianity course that incorporates textbook, DVD, and audio into the lessons. Those add a great bit of variety to the "normal" high school courses.
Joshua is already knee-deep in 3rd grade, using A Beka for his language arts and US History, Saxon for math, Apologia Zoology, and several different resources for reading, art, spelling, etc.
It's nice to be back on schedule, I must grudgingly admit. We all needed it. :)

A blog and a shop

I've been sewing a lot lately in preparation for opening a shop on http://www.etsy.com/. If you've never been there before, head over and check it out. Be warned, though, it's ADDICTING. There is so much creativity! I've gotten a lot of ideas from there and have spent a good bit of money on that inspiration. Ok, mostly I've just shopped. But using the word "inspiration" makes it sound less wasteful. :)
My intent is to have my shop up and running by the end of September in order to be prepared for holiday orders. I have a sweet, talented, newly-graduated graphic designer working on my logo for me, and every spare minute I have I am downstairs sewing and sewing.
I also plan on starting a blog to showcase some of the things I make as well as decorating ideas and other cool things I find on the web. This blog will be a public blog, as opposed to our family blog which, while not altogether private, is pretty secure.
I haven't decided whether to open the new blog under a different email or to use this one. Depending on which I decide, it may become necessary for me to make Family Fudge password-protected. I like to use this blog as a way to share our family with our family and friends, but don't really want to do that with the entire world. If I do decide to go that route, I'll let you know and if you want to continue reading on here you can email me for the password.
I'm excited about what the future holds! It could be the beginning of a new chapter....
And because I know some of you will ask, here is a prototype of one of the items I'll have for sale in my shop:

And now I've got to go drain the pool......again. Thanks to Tropical Storm Lee we're pretty set with our precipitation levels.....

An Ordinary Life

This morning my boy (yes, THAT boy) is gone. To play paintball. Without either of his parents there to watch out for him. When I think of how far we've come since a year ago, my heart is full of gratitude. My head, though....still workin' it out. To keep myself busy, I am going to update you all on our last couple of weeks, boring as they may have been. (wink)

Ok, so we had the earthquake. Although some people have disparaged our use of the term "earthquake" to describe the 5.8 magnitude occurence (darn west-coasters) it was certainly a notable event! Some of the buildings and monuments in the area are still dealing with the damage from that but the rest of us didn't have much time to fret about it, because in came the hurricane.

Speeding in and out before the hurricane actually arrived, some good friends of ours came up from Virginia to spend a couple of days with us. We've been friends with the Yoswas since wayyyyy back in 1995 (you were 6, Michael!) and you've seen them many times on here--most notably on Thanksgiving every year. Both of our families are growing up and kids are moving on, but we had a great time with Jan, Anthony, and Zachary and sent them back home just in time to batten down the hatches.

The big boy down in Raleigh was driving home from the studio in Kinston just ahead of the storm. Raleigh didn't get much of a hit at all and he reported their power flashing a few times, but nothing else. I updated here around 8:30 Saturday night--things were lookin' good. I hit send. And then the power went out.

And Tuesday afternoon it came back.

Honestly, besides losing some food and not being able to shower (even our gym was without power) it wasn't too bad. We were thankful not to have any real damage and had a good time hanging out together. And as of last night (Friday) there were still 8,000 homes in the county without power so I am NOT complaining!



gazebo still standing!

 One afternoon we went over to hang out with our good friends, the Hoffmans. Their family is so dear to us. Angela and I had fun planning her school room (well, it was fun for me to dream---she actually gets to implement it) and the kids had a blast together, as usual. I think it was our first real outing since the power had gone out and it was a lovely day. We are blessed with such sweet friends who would offer any kind of help we might need (showers, COFFEE, some other friends brought us ice one night...).

The week went on as normal after we were powered up...church Wednesday (had no church Sun b/c no one, including the church, had power), PT, huge commissary trip, planning for school which starts next  Tuesday. Alyson started school at the University of Montana--and after a few schedule changes, I think she's on track!
My soldier got a new job here. An exciting, challenging job which is an affirmation of the work he's done thus far. So proud of him.
And now it's the long weekend....Last night we went to a free Blake Shelton concert at Fort Meade, which was so fun! We took our lawn chairs and a baseball and gloves, and enjoyed a beautiful evening before the concert. Blake was great (although a little loud for Joshua..) and we were home before 10. :)



great seats





talking to the soldiers

On to today. Nick is gone until 3. He's so excited to go--and I'm so happy he is able. Pray that he's protected and stays well......

have a good Labor Day!

p.s. This very short clip is for Alyson. I ran out of free space on the camera! :-\