An “Ask Sus” Vacation Special

So, Sus, where have you been?  My Google Reader was lonely.

I’m fresh off a mini-vacation with friends K&B and family, and I am refreshed and utterly vacated.  Good times were had by all, and the Commonwealth of Virginia (and I) can breathe a sigh of relief that the boys did not damage anything historically significant.  There was only that one little incident where someone lifted the armor and went running a quarter of a mile down the sidewalk to go find Mom.  Fortunately we were able to take a picture before Security noticed it was missing.

Did everything go off without a hitch?

Not exactly.  We loaded up kids, luggage, enough snacks, toys and DVDs to ensure a very fun ride, and then *click* *click* *click*…

Dead car.

Which is very odd since I had gone to Food Lion mere minutes before because we were out of syrup and we could not eat our traditional Saturday morning pancakes without it.  And I was annoyed that I paid 50 cents extra for the non-high-fructose-corn-syrup kind and got home and proudly showed my beloved children who could not have cared less, and my beloved husband turned the bottle over, and the first ingredient?  CORN SYRUP.  Just not the high-fructose kind. I am such a sap.

Was there a point to this story?

Oh, yes.

So we crammed everybody into Dad’s car – the pretty one – the one that doesn’t have ground up chicken nuggets in the floorboard – and went our merry way.  Dad gets major points for not grinding a molar over that. The downside was no DVD player and Dad’s selection of music which included a lot of Kool and the Gang. I may have ground a molar over that.

How was your hotel?

Oh, you mean the 4th one we finally checked in to after discovering that the pool at the originally reserved one was closed for renovation?  It was lovely.  It had a pool.  And at this point, stopping the children from hyperventilating was high on everyone’s priority list.

And the hotel had cinnamon buns that I know the other guests would have loved to enjoy for breakfast had they arrived BEFORE my children did.

And the walls were soundproofed, which I’m sure B&K appreciated since their room was next to ours and my boys decided that shooting cap guns inside our room 50 million times was a fun thing to do.

Was the trip educational?

I’m so proud of the boys.  They have learned to read a map.  I foolishly thought this would help them find directions to the blacksmith’s shop, the school, the church, etc.  They honed in on “Ye Olde Toyshop” and could not have cared less about anything else the entire time we were there.  At said Toy Shoppe they purchased wrist-mounted laser-sighted dart guns, cuz nothing screams “Colonial Williamsburg” like the ability to put your brother’s eye out at close range.

Oh, and we bought muskets.  Which they insisted at pointing at all the Europeans (not topless this time, thank goodness), and pretending they were expelling the Brits.  I tried to look at it as an educational opportunity to teach our foreign friends about the Second Amendment.

And they learned how to man curtsy.  Which was fun to do while we were wandering Colonial Williamsburg, but made the man in the elevator back at the hotel a little nervous.

Anyplace other than Williamsburg?

Oh yes.  I also dragged them to visited Jamestown Settlement.  Dad wasn’t so sure about that one. I was pushing it since we had already been educational the day before.

But the minute we walked onto the grounds at Jamestown, we were greeted by this and Dad perked up:

Dear Reader, does this look like 1607 to you?  Guess who had unwittingly planned our visit to Jamestown on Military Battlecamp Re-enactment Weekend?  Guess who was now in the 4th circle of hell? Me.  Who was now ecstatic?  Everyone else.

Sometimes you gotta’ take one for the home team.

And now my children think that Jamestown rocks. 

Because nothing screams “colonial fun” louder than blowing up a hay bale with a grenade thrown at thirty paces.

Have a nice day.