Thanksgiving at Williamsburg Va.

For Thanksgiving we went to Williamsburg and Jamestown.  The birthplace of our great nation.

We started in Williamsburg.  This is the Governors mansion.  During the Civil War it was destroyed and Rockefeller rebuilt this and the rest of the town.

Below is inside the mansion. This is the two oldest daughters room.

Johnny and Grace Thanksgiving day.

Grace in timeout - Williamsburg style.

Downtown Williamsburg.

It was a beautiful day but a little cold so we bought a refillable mug for hot chocolate.

Wish we could have taken a carriage ride.

Here the kids are standing in front of a flute player.

Next we went to Jamestown.  Kind of did the reverse history.  It was right on the river and further away geographically so we did it second.  Below is a statue of Pocahontas.

Construction on the current church tower began in 1639 taking 4 years to complete. The rest of the original church was destroyed after abandonment in 1750 when a new church was built 3 miles away. Next to the original 1639 tower is a church building built in the twentieth century on the cobblestone foundations of the older 1617 church and brick foundations of the 1639 church. The present church was built by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in 1907, and the original 1617 foundations may be viewed under glass on the floor inside. These foundations represent the church where the first Representative Legislative Assembly met, which convened there on July 30, 1619.^[1]
Nearby St. Luke's Church is a similar church surviving from 1632.  Below is a photo of the nearly 400 year old church.  The oldest one in the US.

 Excavation of James Town.

 Replica of one of the three ships that brought the first colonists to James Town. The federal parks takes care of the original James Town and about 1 mile down the road is where the town has been rebuild with colonial buildings, fires, a church, the tree ships and an Indian village. The members of the Virginia Company that came with the first ships did not worry about the Indians. They were told that the Indians were a peaceful, helpful people. The colonists were really worried about the Spanish who were settled in Florida.

 We came home and decorated the house.  We bought our first fake Christmas tree.  Initially, I had a problem with a fake tree having traditionally driven up to the mountains to cut down a tree.  I love the smell, and the beauty.  But since we'll be going overseas soon this makes more sense.  It packs down to a small box, has the lights built in, and if it tips over I won't have a huge puddle to clean.  The kids loved that it changed to multiple colors.  After a while the blinking and constant changing started to get a little annoying.  :)

Sunday afternoon at Burke Lake (Early November 2013)

Church is from 9-12, so we have been trying to drive and explore different areas before it gets dark.   Our friend Mike Neville told us about this great walk around Burke Lake. Perfect time to see it with the leaves changing.  Below are the kids at the trail head.

I love having a boy.  Johnny can't walk in the woods 2 minutes without finding a stick to carry around.

  Not sure if it's to help him walk or protect us from wild animals... Notice he is proudly wearing his "SWAT" hat, that came with his Halloween costume.

Gracie posed next to this tree.

Lexie took this one of Paul and I.

Here's Lexie in front of the lake.

The kids and I.

We wandered away from the lake and found train tracks.  I loved the perspective and colors in these photos.

 We came to this cool windmill that Paul said powered a well pump.  There is a water storage next to it.

Back at the lake, it started to get dark.

At dusk we had to go chase down the kids.  Johnny and Livy got real close to falling in.

Paul at his graduation from the Foreign Service Institute. There were about 90 combined Generalist and Specialists graduating. This is the day where they find out what country they have been assigned to go to. We already new ours was Virginia so not as exciting.

 You can't really see it but Jay is holding up the flag he was given when assigned to Virginia.

Above is a picture of us outside Mt. Vernon. I can't believe that I didn't know anything about George Washington's Estate until I moved here. It is really neat to see his house, slaves quarters, and gardens.

Messing around in front lobby of G. Washington's Estate.

Back view of the Estate. We are facing the Potomac.  It is really beautiful. I wish the buildings were painted white. I wonder if they didn't want to compete/copy the white house?

 Speaking of the White House...I keep waiting for Channing Tatum to pop out in the Presidents limo. Paul and I were having an argument about the movie "White House Down" and I said they have a pool at the White House. He didn't believe me and he didn't think my source "White House Down" was a reliable source. I turned to a policeman, who is standing guard. He grudgingly admitted to seeing the movie and said yes there is a pool but don't believe everything I saw on that movie.

We heard really loud music when we were walking around D.C. We had to investigate and it turned out there was a Caribbean Music party going on downtown. The streets were even blocked off. We stood out in the crowd but Grace really got into the dancing.

Lex and Liv...party in the background.

This was a demonstration on how to turn wool into yard at Mt. Vernon.

An example of one of G. Washington's  agricultural farms.

Patomac

Lexi's bedroom. It has great floors. She even scrubbed them like Cinderella. I painted the dark paneling white and will post finished picture soon.

Another view of Lexi's room. The stairs lead up to the family room.

Picture of the family room before I painted it. I painted the red a really pretty blue and the walls a yellow named, "It's a Wonderful Life."

Picture of my room. I painted an accent wall blue.

My 2 friends who I met at a spouses training, at church, and working out. They are also in the F.S. and will be going to different parts of Africa in 8 months. They helped me paint my house. (This was before I moved in) The kitchen was so dark with that panelling. Soooo we painted it a nice swiss coffee white.

We went with Marie and Jared and clan to visit Annapolis. I had no idea how cute and quaint it is.The town is well preserved with cute shops on the bay. We went to a live history demonstration on what life was like in the 1600's and toured the navel academy. -Which I didn't even know about. It was decided that the singles ward here has to be pretty awesome with all these uniformed men running around.

Have to have pictures of men in skirts.

We also went to the National Zoo with the Coffmans. We only lost Johnny for a little bit.
 

George Washingtons tomb.

I loved this corn maze. I have never gone through one and we found this fun pumpkin farm on our way home from Annapolis on Saturday. The maze was over 5 acres and our kids took off running right away and we decided we should try to find them...at a more leasurly pase.They went through 3 times during our 1 time.

Fun! Fun!

 Back to Annapolis and Grace who was unhappy about something.

We are on the Navel Academy Grounds

When you climbed on this platform, you can see out over the corn maze.

This is our secret package...from the spy museum.

Grace and pumkin carving day at school.

I found this great costume for johnny. It is a SWAT teams uniform. He loves it...

My gorgeous girl Liv. She was dolled up under duress but we took some family photos that day and so it was a necessary evil.

China town. We went here Saturday after seeing the Spy Museum. IT is pretty non existent compared to S.F. and N.Y.

 Outside the spy museum

I got a picture of Johnny's hat. A parent made these at their classroom party and his kind of stood out.

We wanted to go on a walk after church to enjoy the beautiful leaves. Our friend Mike suggested we take this walk around Lake Burke. It was gorgeous.

 Burke Lake

  Burke Lake

 Burke Lake

I have never see this show but Lexi told us about a reality show called D.C. Cupcakes. We saw this and had to sample the cupcakes. Pretty delicious!

Monday the kids were out of school so we went to the Holocaust Museum. I remember  it being a highlight of my family trip 19 years ago. I didn't know how the kids would take it and it was hard for some of them. We ended going through pretty quickly so they could get a general idea of what happened but not see all the horrific things. I'll take Lexi back sometime just by herself.

She really enjoyed checking out the uniformed private school boys who were also there on the same day as us. she told me she is looking forward to private schools overseas.

I uploaded the wrong picture, but as we were going into the museum, a black limo with flags and lots of police escorts came barreling past.