First two days of vacation

I am happy to say that we survived the grueling week of play practices last week. I'm not certain if I'll be willing to do that again, but the kids did a good job at both performances. Paul and Pop Pop attended the show on Thursday night. Oliver, Tab, Micah, and I attended on Friday night. I was told that I would need to stay until 10:45pm to help with cleaning, but thankfully another mom came up to me and offered to do my assignment for me. That literally brought me to tears. I was so exhausted, and it was such a relief to be able to leave at 9:15pm. On Saturday I stayed at home sweet home all day. Kay and Allen spent a few hours at our house playing games and eating dinner. On Sunday we went to church, came home to change clothes, get Milo, and eat lunch, and then the five of us plus Milo and Nadia's friend, Jill, drove to Knoebels. Melinda and her son, Xander, met us at the park. We had six free handstamps. I didn't use mine, so we gave our two extra stamps to Xander and Jill. The forecast was not the best, but I think that was a blessing because I think that was likely the reason the park wasn't crowded. It rained a little around 5pm, but they didn't close the rides, and many people left the park at that time. We stayed until a little after 7pm. Everyone, including Milo, had a great day!  Paul went to work on Monday. I had a very busy day between a 2-hour

appointment for the van, a haircut, packing, mowing, buying some clothes for Paul and the kids at Walmart, and weed whacking. It rained on and off which made it more of a challenge to finish mowing the lawn, but I did manage to finish before it got dark. 

We left the house at 6:45 on Tuesday morning. I had made egg and cheese bagel sandwiches for everyone, and we had packed our lunch. Our first stop was Catoctin Mountain National Park in Maryland. We hiked for one hour, and I didn't break any bones! Our second stop was Harper's Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia. The kids earned two Junior Ranger badges on Tuesday. We had dinner and spent the night at dad and Margie's house. We played games and played with their cat (Onyx) and kitten (Ollie). We all slept well last night because we had gotten up earlier than usual (I had gotten up at 5:15am). The only thing we spent money on that day was gas and a magnet that we bought at Harper's Ferry. Thankfully the gasoline is cheaper than in Pennsylvania. 

This morning Margie served a large, scrumptious breakfast of bacon, eggs, potatoes, grapes, donuts, and English muffins, and we also made sandwiches with her homemade bread for our supper this evening. She also sent us with some of the kids' favorite snacks. Dad and Margie had wanted to visit the National D-Day Memorial for a few years, and it finally happened this morning. After a guided tour of the memorial, they treated everyone to lunch at Ruby Tuesday. I think it was the first time the kids ate in a Ruby Tuesday. After a late lunch, they returned to their home, and we drove 30 minutes to the Booker T. Washington National Monument. The kids earned another Junior Ranger badge. Since we had a large breakfast and ate lunch at a sit-down restaurant, we had sandwiches in the van while we drove for three hours to Charlotte, North Carolina. Originally, we had planned to spend time at two attractions in this city, but those places weren't actually open today. We planned to swim in the outdoor pool at the hotel, but there wasn't any water in the pool. The breakfast tomorrow is "grab and go" which certainly isn't our preference, but it's better than nothing. Our hotel room is a suite. The second room has a sofa bed and a full kitchen. I told Nadia she has her own apartment!

I have taken VERY few pictures for the past eight months, but over the last six days I've taken quite a few. At the moment it's hard to choose which ones to include in this post! I will post more of them in the future as it's time to go to bed.