Longwood Gardens, PA

A friend of mine suggested a stop for us on the way home from our vacation.  It was near Philadelphia, PA where we would be spending the night.  She said her girls loved it.  My kids weren't so sure when they heard it was a garden, but they knew Mom loved flowers and needed a flower fix to get her to spring.  So, we stopped.

It ended up being a highlight of the trip!  The kids went crazy taking pictures and trying out all their settings on their cameras to get amazing pictures.  They took all the artistic pictures - mine were just for fun.

Here's some of them:

 

Early Spring on the Beach

 

We have enjoyed a chilly but wonderful time away as a family in Virginia and North Carolina. Some of our highlights were just watching the ocean, swimming at our condo, exploring Jockey's Ridge sand dunes, visiting Norfolk Zoo, playing 3D blacklight mini golf, playing at parks, touring Appomattox Court House, and eating Sweet Frog yogurt. And of course visiting family!

 

Cody could have played in the sand all day!

The waves were big after the winter storm came through the day before.

Fun with cousins.

We weren't sure about this at first, but it was fun!  See the 3D glasses - the holes were not was they appeared through the glasses.

We LOVED Sweet Frog - ate their 3 times!

Visited Appomattox Court House - perfect for home school since we just finished studying the Civil War.

 

I'll be adding another post of our trip home.  We had a couple more stops that we loved!

Homestyle Camping

Our plans were to go camping at a state park in Vermont, but plans needed to be changed after we planned a big trip to Kansas and Colorado.  We just couldn't fit it all in the schedule.  So, we decided to just half camp at home.  We were too busy to even set up the tent in the backyard.  The kids did "camp out" downstairs in a homemade indoor tent.

Anyway, we enjoyed our favorite parts of camping:  the campfire, the marshmellows, the stories under the stars, the campfire dinner, early morning breakfast outside with the Coleman stove, hot chocolate, hot tang, pancakes and bacon, and family together time.

Chocolate World

On our way home we stopped at Hershey Chocolate World.  This is a special place for us.  We first visited here hours before picking up Lila on her way home to us from Liberia.  We needed some way to pass the anxious time of waiting.  So, we finally had a chance to stop back by again, only this time with Lila (and Cody.)

Also linked with Weekly Wrap-up and Hip Homeschool Hop,Works for Me Wednesday, Raising Homemakers, Wordless Wednesday, What We're Learning, and Friday Favorite Things.

Beach Time

Lemurs and Alligators and Tigers, oh My!

This week on vacation and (homeschool):
We have been on vacation and enjoying the warm weather and family.  Some of our highlights so far have been ...

...Lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center.  This is the largest lemur reserve outside of Madagascar.  It was fascinating.

... Alligators at Myrtle Beach

... Tigers at Myrtle Beach

These tigers were at Barefoot Landing shopping area at Myrtle - who would have thought?

Also linked with Weekly Wrap-up and Hip Homeschool Hop,Works for Me Wednesday, Raising Homemakers, Wordless Wednesday, What We're Learning, and Friday Favorite Things.

Summer Recap (July) Nephews and Trip to meet birthmother!

Our summer has been a busy and blessed summer - too busy to sit at the computer. Early July my nephews visited for almost two weeks. Pretty much the hottest two weeks we've ever had. So all my ideas for outdoor New England fun didn't work out except for swimming.  We did get to visit the Polar Caves, eat lots of popsicles, and do the slip and slide.  We also had fun watching America's Got Talent too.  I am so glad they came, and I loved having them here!!

We took the cousins home on our way across the country to meet the birthmother and birthfather that we are matched with.  It was an adventure that we will always remember.  We really like her a lot and are now expectantly waiting to hear from her when she is about to have the baby.  I will write more on this in another post.  We did find out that she is expecting a boy!  So we are thinking of boy names.

On our trip we had some family time with my parents and brother in Colorado Springs, CO.  We love Pike's Peak and Garden of the Gods.  We only were in CO for a couple of days, but very relaxing.  We also toured the Compassion International headquarters Visitor's Center.  We sponsor a boy from Kenya.  The tour gave the kids an idea of what life might be like in Kenya and what Compassion does with the children.  We were inspired.  After Colorado we headed to Kansas to visit my brother and family and aunts and uncles. 

We had lots of swimming fun in the sun everywhere we went!  I will write more in the next post. 

Speaking of swimming, Lila learned to swim this summer!  So we have been swimming at every opportunity!

Our Trip To Boston And Maine

We went to Boston and Maine. First we went to Boston. It was fun. I liked when we went to the waterpark. It had lots of waterslides. Then we went to Maine. We stayed in a cabin at a campground called Narrows Too. We went sea kayaking at a place next to our campground. We also went hiking. It was fun. We even saw a bear in our campground. That was surprising. We saw some cruse ships when we were on our vacation. They were big cruse ships. I think the best part was the camping part.



Have a nice day. Mara