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| Luke, Andres, James, Anna & Bonnie on Easter Sunday |
Spring Break this year offered a familiar tradition for Anna and family.......that it is always different. This year was no exception. Well, there are some things that are traditional. First, Anna's spring break is always the week of Easter. Second, we have Easter bread (if we are lucky, it is Aunt Mary's Easter bread). Third, Mom makes lamb cake. This year we had all of these traditions, along with a trip to New York, a performance at the George Mason University Center for the Arts (that would be a performance by Anna) and a trip to the mountains of Virginia to stay in a cabin built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936.
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| Coloring eggs with Loren, Terri, Lucy & James |
Easter weekend kicked off with a trip to New York to visit Aunt Mary and James for Easter. This ensured we would have delicious Easter bread and Anna would get to color eggs again with James. The added bonus this year was that Aunt Loren, Aunt Lucy, Aunt Teri, Luke and Andrew also came on Saturday to join in the festivities. After a delicious dinner on Saturday night, followed by a very long political discussion in which Luke and Andrew debated Joe on various economic theories and the current political environment (thanks to all of his reading of the Wall Street Journal and his smart phone, Joe was armed with various charts and graphs from independent sources). After a couple of hours, the participants took a break to color Easter eggs.
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| Easter weekend at Aunt Mary's |
Easter Sunday was one for the record books with temperatures in the low eighties! Anna awoke to an Easter basket and egg hunt courtesy of her cousins. Anna and her parents joined Aunt Mary and James for mass at an absolutely gorgeous church. The choir was amazing and the entire service was like going to a concert. The afternoon was spent on a hike to the beach at a local state park (who ever thought you could wade at the beach on Easter Sunday) followed by a delicious lamb dinner (thanks to Aunt Mary) followed by lamb cake. It was a great weekend and fun Easter. A big thanks to Aunt Mary and James for hosting!
On Monday, Anna and family headed back to Virginia on what turned out to be a VERY long trip. The family made it in time to get changed and head back out the door for the Vienna Jammers performance at George Mason University's percussion festival. The Jammers got to open for college students, which was very cool. Anna was particularly excited about going back stage to see the "real dressing rooms." They also got to see one of their instructors perform (he is a graduate music student at GMU). It was another great experience for the kids to both perform and watch the college percussionists.
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| One of Anna's many fish |
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| Cabin in the Woods |
Tuesday afternoon it was off for the next adventure of spring break: Douthat State Park in Southwest Virginia. The park is the first state park in Virginia and was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1936. The family rented one of the CCC cabins to stay in. The added bonus of this trip was that Storm got to come along. As always, he was the most enthusiastic traveler and hopped right in the car. He was also the first one to want to come home (we decided he is definitely a suburban dog....not a rural dog). Despite some rain, the family managed to enjoy fishing, hiking, and building camp fires. Anna proved to be the family fisher-person and caught several. She is good as long as her Dad will bait her hook (there was a lot of shrieking when worms were involved). While Anna and Joe were fishing, Theresa decided to go on a small hike by the lake.....only to get caught in a sudden downpour of rain. Fortunately she found shelter at a campground bathhouse, only to realize that she could not let the family know where she was because there was no cell service. Fortunately both Joe and Theresa were able to channel their pre-cell phone skills and managed to locate one other through sheer logic. This was truly an unplugged trip - no phone service, no television, no wifi........the family was forced to do things like talk to each other and play board games. In between the rain, the family managed a hike up a mountain to a local waterfall (the view was beautiful). Anna got to practice her newly acquired girl scout fire-starting skill while building a camp fire. Theresa had the chance to sit down and read a
fiction book that she could not put down. It was a very relaxing trip.
It was a busy spring break, but a good week off. It is somehow fitting that the week ended with a gloomy, rainy weekend (including Anna's first soccer game, which was played in the driving rain). Back to reality.....and time to plan the next trip. Happy Easter!
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| Hike to Big Suck falls (yes that is the name) |
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