This past week was spring break for Nina and Lyla. We headed out of town on Tuesday to arrive at Hartfield that evening. We invited another family down with us and together we visited Colonial Williamsburg for the first time on Wednesday.
It was pretty much what we expected, and we didn’t book any of the tours or get tickets to the fancy buildings (since we had Cayenne with us), but we still got a feel for the colonial life which Nina is studying this year in Virginia history. Since it was our first time there, getting in the stocks was a must!
Lyla loves horses and wanted to stop and pet any that she could, but this pair cracked me up. The one is sticking out his tongue at me!
After spending the first part of the day in Colonial Williamsburg, we stopped through Yorktown on our way back to Hartfield. Of course we visited Ben and Jerry’s then took in the scene along the York River waterfront.
The girls love exploring around the river, and if we didn’t have oysters to pick up that evening, I think they could have been happy to stay there and play for the rest of the day.
After Yorktown, we headed back to the area of the house to pick up some oysters for the evening. Virginia oysters have gotten quite popular, and we wanted to give our friends the experience of having some as fresh as you can get. When we picked up our oysters, the guy we bought them from offered to let us try some on his dock. We adults tried one right out of the river, but our biggest surprise was when he offered the kids one and Lyla accepted. She ate it straight from the river – no cracker, no cocktail, and she kept it down! While she definitely preferred the fried ones that came later in the evening, we were super proud of her for trying a raw oyster!
Once we got back to the house, Mark and his friend shucked them, and we enjoyed an awesome dinner of oysters four different ways.
We took the kids out kayaking on Thursday afternoon, but because it was really windy we thought they’d be better off going with an adult. Mark and JT took out each of the kids, but it was Cayenne who was most impatiently awaiting her turn…
…and she finally got it!
All the rest of the pictures were taken with my phone. It doesn’t have the best camera, but it does the trick when I don’t have the real thing with me.The weather was gorgeous while we were down there, and since the girls love horses we took a walk down the street to visit them. Lyla spent all her time with the miniture horses while Nina preferred the full sized one. They give them names, feed them juicy grass that they can’t reach from inside the fence, and give them plenty of attention!
We promised the girls we would take them to Busch Gardens on Friday if the weather cooperated, and it turned out to be another great day, so off we went.
Nina is the queen of roller coasters. She goes on anything she’s big enough to ride, and this year she’s big enough to ride everything. She wants to go from one big roller coaster to the next (and more than once at that). In the middle picture below, she and Mark are in the outside left two people in the back row riding the Griffon. She’s nuts, and she’s even wearing out Mark who is a roller coaster fanatic, so it takes a tag team effort to keep up with her.
Most of the time Mark will want to ride the big rides with her, and I will wait with Lyla as some of them she isn’t tall enough to ride yet even if she wanted to, however even I have to take one for the team every once in awhile!
We had a fun day at Busch Gardens then made the decision to get on the road late on Friday so we could spend the day at home on Saturday. It was a long and exhausting day, but the girls had a great time and it was a good way to round out the spring break week.
We had to laugh with this last picture. It looked like the eagle was perched on Nina’s head. 
