Rebels

Earlier this fall we studied the Civil War. In June we had our first Civil War related field trip when we took our first trip to Gettysburg. I am planning to take the kids back to Gettysburg for a homeschool program in February. Our second Civil War field trip was to Antietam in September. Next month we are all planning to visit the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, and next May I am planning to take the kids to Ford's Theatre. Today we visited two Civil War sites in Virginia - the Manassas Battlefield and the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond. The kids each earned a Junior Ranger badge at the battlefield. Originally I thought they could earn four badges on this trip, but yesterday I found out that the visitor center at the Richmond battlefield closed a few weeks ago due to building renovations.

Virginia is still considered a mid-Atlantic state by the National Park Service, just like Pennsylvania, but the weather is definitely warmer. Yesterday morning we discovered snow on the ground when we woke up. I was a bit concerned about

driving the van to church given three of my tires need to be replaced, but the kids and I did make it there safely, thankfully. Usually the boys ride to church with Paul, but yesterday he planned to go to work. He only got half-way to work before he turned around due to the conditions of the roads. Because the boys were going with me yesterday, I had to wake them up yesterday. I rarely wake the kids up, but I ended up waking them up two days in a row because we left the house a little before 7am. I bought pop tarts so Paul and the boys could eat breakfast in the van. I ate my oatmeal before we left, and Nadia brought a piece of toast in the van. Today it was warmer down here in Virginia, and we actually walked into the White House of the Confederacy without our coats on. Also, I noticed that many of the trees still have their leaves whereas ours haven't had leaves since the end of October! We made two very brief stops on our way to Manassas. In Lewisburg we returned some things outside our library and also used a coupon at a Redbox to rent the new Dora movie on DVD. The kids had been wanting to see the Dora movie since it was in the theatres this past summer.

The drive to Manassas was a little bit less than 4 hours. We arrived just in time for a 45 minute walking tour of the first battle at 11:00 and then we watched the movie at 12:00. We looked through the museum as the kids worked to complete the activities in the Junior Ranger booklets. As we were only there for 2.5 hours, we really just scratched the surface of what you can see and do at this battlefield, but the kids wouldn't have wanted to spend more time there. It was Paul's third time visiting this battlefield, and actually it's one of the few he and I had been to together before we had kids. The drive to Richmond was a little less than two hours long. We had a private guided tour of the White House of the Confederacy as the five of us were the only ones signed up to take the 4:00 tour. After the tour we had dinner at a Red Robin that was across from the hotel we're staying at tonight. We used a gift card I had gotten with credit card points. Would you believe including a tip it cost $50 for the five of us to have dinner? Thankfully the gift card was enough to cover the whole bill including the tip. The Red Robin was inside a shopping mall. I couldn't believe that the mall was actually filled with stores like Sears, JCPenney, Barnes & Noble, etc. Those stores have left the malls in our area. I thought shopping malls were soon to be a thing of the past, but this mall seemed unaffected by that trend.

As far as passing the time in the van, we listened to music for the first hour and the last 30 minutes of our driving time. In between we alternated between listening to Across Five Aprils (a Civil War book) and watching the Dora movie. Thankfully, we won't spend as much time in the van tomorrow.