The Beach and more!

So, for fear of getting even further behind, I will do a quickish sum of the things that I haven't posted yet. Amy and I were woken up fairly early by children noises since I woke up and then the girls came in Spencer's room where I was, and then they wrestled with me on the bed, squealing and all and woke up Amy, who was in the living room. We then played with them a while and Spencer left for school at 9, so we watched the kids while Terra drove him to school. After Terra got home, she printed off some directions so we could drive to Virginia beach. Then she offered us her GPS, and we were on our way. IT was a lot easier to get there with the GPS, and on our way home, all we had to do was hit home, and it calculated the directions back to Terra's house. We found some parking and then walked a ways to get to the beach. It was a pretty nice beach, but was pretty cold, though not unbearable. There were hotels lining the ocean front for more than a mile, and we walked more than a half of a mile down the coast, near the water towards a dock. We went a tiny bit into the water, just enough to get our feet wet, and that was enough, since it was really cold water. The sand was nice and we saw some cool little black things and some shells. It was a great walk along the beach. We made a little sculpture in the sand and talked a long time. Once we finally got to the dock, we realized that it was only some tourist thing and was private property, so we couldn't even walk out on it. Oh well. We then had a nice long walk back towards the car. Then, we went over to the McDonalds and got a little food to go along with the oranges Terra gave us and my birthday candy I had brought. We read in the car, since we knew that there would be little time for it after we got back to the Drakes house. We then drove back and played with the Girls some more. We drew some more pictures on the Sidewalk and bounced on the trampoline some more. While the children were getting ready for bed, Zach flosses each of them. We thought this was interesting, but it made sense since he is a dentist after all. After the children had gone to sleep, Amy and I watched How to Train Your Dragon. It was a pretty good and interestingly animated movie, so we were glad that we watched it.

On Wednesday, we got ready to leave and packed our things. We said good bye and drove the 3 hours back to Charlottesville. After we got home we just did some homework and went to bed early, since we were tired from getting up early 2 times with the children.

On Thursday, we went to Monticello, or most of the way anyway. First we looked up the directions on Google earth and loaded all of the necessary landscape and then brought the laptop just in case we got lost. It is in the mountains a little ways away, and the road getting up to it was pretty wine-dy, not windy, because that just looks like a weather term. We got up there and then went to the visitor center, because we didn't know what was going on. Apparently it costs $17 to get in, and we didn't really want to see it that badly, so we just did what you could for free. We watched the informational Video about Thomas Jefferson and Monticello, and then went to the museum. There were lots of cool models of his house, the first one, and then his second remodeled one. There were several neat contraptions that were in it, and there were some especially interesting double doors that were attached under the floor to each other in such a way that when you opened one door, the other would open also. IT was really cool and made me wish I had come up with something like that. After we had finished looking through the museum, we went back outside and noticed that it was raining really hard. We went under the overhang to as close as we could get to the parking lot, and then, after having forgot where the car was exactly and having been pointed in the right direction by Amy, I ran towards the parking lot. It was actually he wrong one, and I tried to open a car that looked similar, but realized the unlock button was doing nothing for it. Then I spotted the one with flashing lights in the parking lot above the one I was in. This whole ordeal probably only took about 15 seconds, but it was raining hard enough that that had gotten me sufficiently wet. I picked up Amy and then we drove home. The windy road seemed a lot worse on the way back, since the rain was coming down so hard that we could barely see even with the windshield wipers going their fastest. I was happy to see some real rain for a change, like the big storms in Michigan, so I liked it, though it was a bit scary to drive in. Anyway, we made it back to her Aunts house safely and watched another of the Horror movies that she had gotten for Christmas. IT was still pretty cheesy, but more scary than the last one. We did some homework too, as we tried to do every day and then went to bed.

On Friday, we did homework all morning, but then in the evening went on a Date to the Old Downtown Charlottesville. It is a cool pedestrian only mall and there was a good restaurant that she had eaten at with her family previously, so she wanted to take me to it. I forget the name of it exactly, but it had noodles and dumplings. They were relatively cheap and very delicious, so we had lots of the Dumplings. I also bought some hot and sour soup, but it actually was really gross and had tofu and weird flavors in it, but since it was cheap, I didn't feel too badly about throwing it away. Amy didn't like it either by the way. After dinner, we drove back home and watched the first Harry Potter movie. It was really good, but kinda funny to watch after having watched the most recent one recently. The children in the first movie were so small compared to the last movie. Anyway, it was really funny to watch Amy get all nostalgic about it, but it was very cute all the same. She had grown up reading the books and was about the same age as the main characters, so she was really into the books and movies. It brought back old memories for her, and quite often, she would quote something before it actually happened on the movie.

On Saturday, John got to Charlottesville for his spring break, so we all went into town to get him. We then went back to the downtown area and ate a Thai place. It was really good, but quite hot. I guess that was partially because I got 3 out of 5 for spiciness. IT was really good and had some good sauce over rice noodles with chicken and shrimp. Yummy! Sorry, it is getting late, and I just want to catch up and go to bed, so... We went home and went to bed after watching a Seinfeld episode in George and Mary's room with John. It was fun to be with John. He is going to NYU for acting by the way.

On sunday, we got up early and got ready to leave. We said good bye, got on the train, and were back in DC by 2. I played soccer with Jeff for a while, and them some more kids came down to the soccer field, so we scrimmaged with them a while, and that was fun! I can't wait for the soccer to start, but I'm already quite busy... What to do?

Goodnight!