To Williamsburg! Again...

In early October we drove down to Virginia to meet my family at their favorite East Coast vacation spot, Williamsburg and its environs. We didn't actually tour Colonial Williamsburg, having done so on many occasions before, so this trip we took excursions to Jamestown Settlement, Shirley Plantation and a cool corn maze we found on the way.

Up first: my bottom. I post this here to document the fact that Andrew really likes to take pictures of my backside. How do I know this? As I uploaded the pictures from the vacation I noticed quite a number of photos that looked a lot like this. Either that or he is making some kind of statement about husband oppression and always having to walk behind me.

This is Shirley Plantation, one of the oldest homes in America. It has been owned by the same family for hundreds of years and they are still living in the upper floors of the house. Pictures of the interior are prohibited but needless to say it was old, incredibly fascinating and our tour guide was a charming old woman made as only The South can make them.

This is a field of cotton. I had never seen one before but Shirley is still a working plantation, as it has been for hundreds of years...yup, this place is OLD. It is amazing it is still here, in the same family since the 1600's. How many people can even say that their parents still live in the house they grew up in? Not many.

 Why am I so excited in this picture? I am looking at a root cellar. Strange though it may seem, I find root cellars endlessly fascinating and the excitement engendered by this colonial one could not be restrained.

Up next, Jamestown Settlement. This isn't the actual Jamestown, just a reconstruction and living history museum but really fun for the kids.

Ravenna cooking our dinner over the coals. I think she has squatting down to an art.

This is me on a reconstructed ship based on the vessel that brought John Smith to his New World Pocahontas, except that wasn't how the story really went...Either way, we learned that it majorly sucked to be an early colonist of Virginia. I was mostly interested in the gardens they had on display and the plants that they were growing in them. 

I am not sure if Opa Kevin is yawning or being scary for the camera here but it was too good not to post.

This was the only decent picture from the corn maze. It was a super cool one too but our photographer must have been pooped from our one hour and fifteen minute trek through the maze to VICTORY!

No post on this vacation would be complete without "The Chris Face." This face, demonstrated by his girlfriend Michelle and Andrew, perfectly illustrates his occasionally misanthropic disposition.

But we think that Michelle brings out the best in him.

 Of course, no family vacation is complete without some snuggles with Oma. And this concludes our pictorial journey.

My brother Josh was also on this vacation but this was the best we could get of him:

Colonial Williamsburg

I LOVE Colonial Williamsburg! It sounds very corny, but it is definitely one of my favorite places to visit. My parents were taking a vacation there the first week of July and we decided to join them for a few days. We really had a wonderful time, learned a lot and even had a few exciting adventures.

Adventure #1: Traveling with a baby that only wants to crawl/toddle everywhere is extremely difficult when all that is separating your child from precious antiques is a rope that can easily be crawled under. Oh my goodness! It was incredibly difficult to tour the houses with sweet Ravenna inserting her own commentary of modern parenting into our tours of the houses of Williamsburg.

One time it even got me into trouble, or rather, I got myself into trouble! The employees of Williamsburg take their jobs very seriously. When we were touring the Governor's Palace Ravenna got upset at being unable to move around on her own so I asked the tour guide if I could leave and he VERY willingly obliged. I was on the second floor at this time so down the staircase I went and stopped in the foyer below where I was met by a very upset footman. "You need to exit this way, M'am" he says to me. "But can't I just stay down here and look into these rooms?" "No, you need to exit this way," he replied getting more frustrated by the second. "Why can't I just stay right here?" I asked, because seriously, what on earth was I going to do with the guy watching me like a hawk? "You can't stay here because of all the antiques. You need to be with your tour." I then explained to him in very serious terms that I had to leave my group because of my daughter and that I would just wait here for my tour to return, at which point he realized that I wouldn't do what he asked and he gave up.

At the printer's: This guy was hilarious but nobody got his jokes but me and a few others. It really made a bit of an awkward situation but the guy took it in stride. The book binder was really funny as well, but in a really creepy way. He kept saying things like "we don't know who we were."

A lady blacksmith! You might be thinking that this wasn't very historical but I learned something new about women's history: women were employed in just about any profession and trade that you can think of. Seriously! Women basically did whatever their husbands or family's did, although very often women had their own trade along with their husbands. The head blacksmith at the shop pointed out that back then only the wealthy could afford for their wives to stay home. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that this changed.

In Yorktown with my parents!

The obligatory photo-op, and below, a video of me helping to make bricks

Williamsburg will always have a special place in my heart. Going there was such fun and I really hope to be able to go back again soon! Oh, and I got a really awesome gardening hat but it was STOLEN. I almost cried. More on that later.