Williamsburg, VA

For President's Day we took off and headed to Williamsburg.  Mark had Monday off as a federal holiday and he took a couple extra days to make it a 5 day weekend.  Awesome.  We had big plans to leave early Fri morning and spend the day in Richmond but between sleeping in and then having to do some laundry before we could leave we didn't end up leaving town until about 4.  Note to self: never try to leave DC area around 4pm especially on Fri of a holiday weekend!  Putting it mildly, we got stuck in traffic.  It took us 1 1/2 hours to go 13 miles.  But, after 5 hours of driving we finally made it to williamsburg.  To put this in perspective, the trip home only took us 1 hour and 50 min.  The drive was more than worth it though-we had an amazing weekend!  To top it off, our friend Lynne and her daughter Savannah came with us to add to the fun.

Saturday morning we drove over to Yorktown to see some of the colonial history of the area.  Williamsburg is pretty massive and kind of expensive to take two little kids to and Yorktown still has a lot to see, just on a smaller scale so it was perfect for what we needed.  Mason loved all the pictures and models of the boats, horses, and guns.  Dallan was just happy to go along for the ride, as always.

Outside of the Yorktown museum, they have a lot of hands on things to play with and a small farm with animals to feed and everything.  It's not really tourist season and we were basically the only people there so all the employees (dressed in colonial wear of course) were more than anxious for someone to give attention to.  One of the workers gave Mason some food for the animals and he was in heaven.  He was a little nervous about the turkey though considering it weighs as much as he does!  They had a campground set up and although their cannon is currently out of order the guy did let Mark pull the kids around with a handcart which the kids loved.

The resort gave us some coupons to a bounce house/blow up slide place so we decided to take the kids there to play.  It ended up being one of the highlights of the trip!  I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, the kids or us adults! 

We also drove over to Newport News, VA to check out the Virginia's Living Museum.  It was pretty cool.  Kinda like a mix between a museum and a zoo.  They were doing a special on reptiles for February so we were "blessed" with extra snakes and such.  Mason loved the alligator and Dallan loved all the bright fish and coral in the aquariums. 

They also had a display in plexi glass of honeybees and a cross section of their hive (bottom left pic of this last collage).  And what reptile exhibit would be complete without a 4-5 foot long iguana that kids could touch?

We did a lot of fun things but we also made sure to have plenty of down time too.  We went back to our condo each day and let the kids take a nap and then usually just did something small in the evenings like swimming in the resort pool or feeding  the geese and seagulls that were there at the resort.  Mason was a little fish trying to swim all over.  Even little Dallan liked the water but it was pretty cold water so I didn't want him staying in too long. 

This was the first trip we have on since having kids and it was definitely different but so great!  In my opinion, a perfect balance of new and exciting and also relaxing.