A Family Vacation

Aaron is officially and finally done with law school! Yeah. What's next, studying for the bar... UGH. luckily we had a weekend before the bar review began and we decided to go south and see Williamsburg, James Town, and York Town.

It was fabulous! Eli is not a great car traveler, but we made it. On the way down, we stopped in Richmond to visit Jillian and Joel (Aaron's sister and her husband). Joel was working, but Eli had a fun time with Aunt Jillian.


Williamsburg was absolutely gorgeous and it's trips like these that remind me of those things I'll miss when we move west.

Grass on the roof!

Do you see Aaron pushing Eli in front of the mansion?

Our colonial baby!

Apparently Eli would rather be a rebel force.

Thursday we hit Colonial Williamsburg and enjoyed all the old houses. Then we went to James Town where they have marked out the old fort. They also have the old church there and while the bulk of the church is a reconstruction, the tower is still hundreds of years old.


We saw glass blowing (something I've always wanted to see) and spent some time along the James River.




Friday, we went to a sidewalk sale in Colonial Williamsburg that turned out to be sub par compared to other sidewalk sales I've been to. We then decided to drive down to Virginia Beach and see how Eli liked the ocean. Sadly it rained most of the evening and Eli does not like the ocean. He basically clung to me and Aaron and started screaming when Aaron tried to put his feet on the sand. I don't know if it was the crashing of the waves or what, but Eli was not a fan.



Saturday we went across the ferry and saw Bacon's Castle (the oldest house there dating back to the 1600's)

One of the coolest houses I've seen!

and Smith's Fort plantation (land where John Smith started building a secondary fort to James Town and that Powatan gave to John Rolfe and Pocahontas for their wedding). Both were amazing places and probably my favorite places to see on our trip. We also went to lunch at the Smithfield Station (thanks nice man we met on the ferry for the recommendation) and enjoyed a great meal. Eli charmed people at both houses and at lunch and you know how parent's love being told their children are adorable ;)

After returning from across the river we headed to the York Town battlefield where Gen. Cornwallis surrenderred to Gen Washington. Something we found amusing and didn't know before was that there were german solders fighting on both sides. This made it difficult for the germans when one side invaded the other because german orders were being yelled out from both sides and they didn't know which were for them and which was from the enemy.


It was so beautiful there. I absolutely love the rural east. I'm not a huge metropolis fan so DC is not my cup of tea, but if I could live in the unpacked areas of Virginia or Pennsylvania, I wouldn't mind staying out here. I'm excited to move back west, but there are definitely things I'll miss about living here (besides all our friends).