Williamsburg Pictures

Our goal for this last vacation was to mostly stay relaxed and not stick to a schedule. We were hoping to use the time to somewhat heal as a family and just reconnect after our last year. For the most part, we were rather successful.

Leatherworking at the MOMYS Meet-n-Greet

Making a Bookmark

Katie fell in love with the horses and now wants to move closer to Aunt Lisa so she can take riding lessons.

I will say that looking back on it, perhaps attending as part of a retreat run by a group of pretty much Evangelical Christians was perhaps not the best of ideas.  Yes, the kids loved the built in playmates.  We loved knowing that all the condos surrounding us were also filled to the brim with families with many young children so if the kids made some noise, we didn't have to worry. We loved the discount on the lodging and the plan of free activities if you wanted to participate.  But we only attended one day of planned activities before realizing that theologically we were not quite the in the right place for our family.  I'm not so into the patriarchal ideals that pretty much say the wife should not speak in a public gathering if the husband is present.  Gee, who would have thought? At the evening potluck/meet-n-greet activity, the guy in charge was asking each family (which translated to each husband because the wife should not speak) a rather personal get to know you kind of question.

Listening to the answers ahead of us, we knew we were the only Catholics hiding among this group of folks.  I have a feeling a few folks might have flipped out if they discovered that little fact or noticed our kids crossing themselves before prayers.  So after listening to the questions of when did you become a Christian and what Christian book would you suggest for this audience and who has been the biggest influence in your personal walk with Christ, Alan thought he had answers for whatever might be thrown at him.  Instead, he was asked what is your biggest fear.  Um, seriously this was the wrong question for us.  We both instantly felt like we'd had the wind knocked out of us.  I was about to jump in and give a slightly rude answer starting with "well, if you are going to ask such a personal question, I can give you the answer you don't want to hear and tell you why we are here in the first place" but Alan eventually answered instead. He said he thought about answering with the Borg but given that most of the folks were dressed in Colonial garb, he figured the Star Trek reference would be lost on them.  Sigh.  So overall we had a wonderful time though.

Love Kieran's expression

This could be very helpful at home

We spent two days at Colonial Williamsburg itself.  The first day the entire family went but on the second day I stayed back with the younger 3 so that the older 6 could get to everything they wanted to see. On that day, they met an interpreter who grew up telling her Mom that she wanted to be Felicity when she got older (from the American Girl collection).  Given that she is now spending her days working at Colonial Williamsburg dressed much like Felicity would be and spending lots of time standing out in the cold, she warned the children to be very careful about what they wished for.