We landed back home from vacation yesterday afternoon. We had fun, the tree house cottages are AWESOME and my in-laws are doing well.
Points of Interest During Our Time of Absence:
* Tree House Cottages @ The Maple Tree Camp in Gapland, MD
* The Virginia Living Museum — as Elijah says, “it’s like a museum & a zoo shoved together!”
* The Children’s Museum of Virginia — which wasn’t all that grand in our spoiled eyes!
* Edgar Cayce Day Spa — where we both got massages…in the same room…together!
* The Heritage Centre – yummy eats, groceries and gifts/supplies
* Kid’s Cove @ Mount Trashmore Park — totally awesome place for kiddos to play & “Free Runners” to practice
* Trader Joe’s of Newport News, VA — because, even when DH is away from work, he still has to ‘be there’!
I would recommend that everyone who enjoys the outdoors-life, take a weekend or week to enjoy the tree house cottages in Maryland. They were wonderful and the owner is such a nice lady. Everything is very laid back and flexible. The rates are very reasonable and the cabins rock…actually the whole grounds rock. We found mushrooms, fuzzy caterpillars (that I think glowed in the dark), daddy-long-legged spiders, fireflies, mayapples and the supplies needed to make little gnome homes. E was very helpful with gathering sticks and leaves for daddy and fire making — he was even quite skilled in helping to actually start the fires. He had his pocket knife, but never once got it out to use it…maybe it will come in handy helping me in the garden. William was able to basically perfect fire building in a log burning stove, which is nice, since we will hopefully own one in the future. I found that I can make rather mean chili on a log burning stove!
We managed to make it out to the beach one evening from about 10:30pm until a little after midnight…the ocean really is best at night! But alas, a storm and sleepiness were both rolling in, so we had to make for the hotel. I’d love to try and spend the night at the beach in the future — I can imagine the sleep that I would get!
We were a bit disappointed with the children’s museum…or maybe we were just disappointed that it wasn’t as grand as our children’s museum. Either way, it’s a huge space, with lots of ‘dead space’ that could be used for exciting exhibits. Most of the exhibits seemed to be old, not well kept and plenty of things were broken.
The living museum was really cool. I would like to see Pennsylvania try to do something similar. I’d like to go back either without E or when he’s more willing to let me go at a slower pace to ‘enjoy’ it more — read, I really wanted to dawdle and he wanted to run through it fast. Very neat, none the less.
William and I enjoyed our massages from the Edgar Cayce spa. It wasn’t as grand as I had hoped, but it was a neat place, friendly staff and awesome grounds. I think I just needed more than one hour of massage…can a buy a year of it?
The in-laws enjoyed seeing us and spending time with the kiddo. They’re doing well in VAbeach. Their house is very nice and suits them well. They both are enjoying the environment and community. My MIL still (not so secretly) pines for us to move out there… While being near the beach does have it’s perks, being in VAbeach, isn’t my idea of ‘the beach’. Not to mention that we couldn’t afford to live anywhere that we’d find suitable for us there. Besides, we are quite happy in the ‘burgh…actually, I find that I feel more at home here than I ever did back in Oklahoma — I think that has more to do with the fact that I am completely free to be ‘me’ everywhere I am and not just around small circles, in hidden corners.
So, now we are back and getting back to our life…not that vacation isn’t our life too, but it’s nice to be home, in my own bed and not expected to do anything for anyone else — outside of the normal daily expectations…never-mind!
Our community garden now has a fence with a lock…not exactly sure how I am supposed to be gardening with a locked fence and no email detailing this new development, but I am sure that I will get to the bottom of this in a day or so.
Tomorrow is CSA number three for us (fourth of the season, but we missed last week because of vacation) and I am so excited about it! I can’t wait to see what awesome green goodness awaits us.
Well, before I go to bed, I want to leave you with a little bit of teenage-wisdom, which can be found here.
Goodnite.
