Just the highlights...since I'm a little behind!
Thursday morning we headed to Jamestown, once again starting the day with a 2-hour tour. Jamestown is much bigger and busier than the Yorktown Victory Center; there were lots of tour groups shuffling around, often intersecting. We stepped back in time over 150 years before the Revolution and learned about the English attempts to get rich in a new world. (And, for the record, I finally learned the difference between the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements! My history lessons sadly lacked staying power...)
Our first stop was a replica of the Susan Constant, one of three ships that brought the English traders to the New World. Made me slightly nauseated even just thinking about being below deck for 144 days, not to mention being crammed in with 53 other people! After climbing around the ship, we headed to the settlement within the fort after a brief stop to see how to make an Indian canoe and compare/contrast the vessels. We went in various buildings, and the kids got to see yet another musket fired, try on armor, build a wall, and see and feel the difference among coal, coke, and clinker. We decided that Tobin is on track to become an apprentice blacksmith--he correctly guessed each of the lumps! It was interesting to see the governor's dwelling--quite different from the palace at Williamsburg! Much more, ah, rustic, shall we say.
Finally, we spent some time in the Powhatan Indian village. Here the kids got to scrape fur off a hide, make rope, learn about outdoor cooking, and sit inside a dwelling. Lucan was getting rather frantic around this time, so I lay him back in the stroller and walked around on the boardwalk until he conked out. He got a pretty good little nap.
After this, our official tour was over. We went back to see all 3 of the ships up close, but the sun was climbing higher in the sky and people were hungry and thirsty. So before long we got our lunch out of the Suburban and found a shady spot outside to eat. It was much hotter this day than it had been our other days--over 90 degrees. The kids were tired and hot, but they held up pretty well, or at least, the older ones did. Charis was somewhat miserable, as she had hurt her foot the night before while playing in the pool. Ted and I took turns carrying her piggyback when we made the longer walks.
After lunch we gladly made our way inside the air-conditioned museum. We viewed a few things before time for the movie to start, a 24-minute history of Jamestown Settlement. Lucan had a poop blowout in the middle of it, so I missed the end of the movie dealing with that. And apparently Kenna had a meltdown after I left, so the rest of the family also left the theater. We managed to get a good overview of the museum before we decided it was time to go home. Oh, yes, and we also had the obligatory stop at the gift store to look around! We bought a game, Made for Trade, that actually has 4 different game variations and allows players to experience a bit of the decisions early settlers would have had to make. We played a round that night at the condo, and it's pretty fun! We look forward to trying the more complicated versions later.
Back at the condo, we put Lucan down for a nap, polished off the rest of the ice cream we had brought home the day before, and sent Ted and the kids to the pool. I washed up some dishes, started some laundry, and did a short blog post, then ran a couple of errands before dinner.
After baths, when Kenna and Lucan were in bed, we tried out our game and then read a few chapters in Book 1 of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series. We are loving the story! We brought the first two books with us from our library, but unfortunately book 3 was checked out. Apparently the movie covers material from the first 3 books, so we will try to finish reading that before we see the movie. It was a fun way to unwind and relax together...aside from Lucan's yowls. He had a hard time settling down that night!
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