We visited Lexington to celebrate Horaces 10 year anniversary with Oxford Church. They had a lovely reception after church on Sunday including a pot luck with tons of good food, and speeches from several of those who are close to Horace.
The kids still love playing on the tractors. Wish we had more time to have visited the mountain property and our favorite park. Maybe next trip.
The kids loved the water. Initially we tried to get the kids to both sleep in the same bed, but that didn’t end up so well, we each night we would switch off who got to sleep with mommy or daddy.
We had a Dutch wonderful weekend at Dutch Wonderland over the weekend. Skylar has graduated to all the rides in the park and definitely has strong preferences over which ones are her favorite (log flume and the roller coaster – both of which we did 3-4 times in a row).
Parker is also much more aware of his world. He’s more cautious than he was 1 year ago, and even more cautious than 2 years ago when he would have put his head in the jaws of a lion at a moments notice. I think his fav might have been the fun slide. The first day he didn’t want to try it, but by the second day he was racing daddy by himself to the bottom.
Here are some pics of all the fun that we had:
On our second day we hit up the bay and took out a couple paddle boards. Skylar promptly boarded and set sail for the turn around point – about 150 yards from shore. She stood and paddled straight for it until I could catch her and reel her back in. She made it about 130 yards out, and wanted to keep going, but as you can see from the pics, she got a pretty good workout.
One of Parker’s favorite activities was the shooting range. He kept asking if we shot the ‘monsters’ and ‘bad guys’. I’m pretty sure we shot all of them – and we exploded a mug!
Family Camp was a blast and exactly like what you would expect: breakfast promptly at 8:00am, camp counselors, s’mores by the fire, dance night, kayaking, paddle boarding, zip lines, archery, shooting, etc.
We all had a lot of fun, and will be coming back as regulars year after year. Skylar’s favorite activity was the zip line (no surprise there). She giggled with delight as butterfly’s swirled in our stomachs as we waited for our turn to go – 80 feet up in the air.
Parker really took to the water. A few months ago he loved to wear a floaty and play with me in the water, but big man has graduated to full-on swimming. After wearing a life jacket for a few minutes he promptly took it and prepared to dive into the deep end.
I recommended that we head to the shallow end of the pool where Daddy could touch. The rest of the time he dove into the water, swam a few feet, came up for air, and then rinse and repeat.
Over Memorial Day weekend we went to Painter, Virginia for a hang gliding lesson and to attend family camp at Silver Beach. Hang gliding was awesome! We went up to 4,000 feet and I got to fly the glider for most of the ride.
A glider will pull several G’s, they fall apart at 6 G’s. Good to know 😉
Skylar and Parker enjoyed riding on the golf cart and playing with the guys who run the facility. After I landed Skylar asked when it was going to be her turn…
Our last couple days were spent in Del Morro. I didn’t love Del Morro – it seemed like it has past it’s heydey maybe 10 years ago.
The kids loved the pool – honestly, we could have vacationed 10 miles down the road – as long the hotel had a nice pool they would be in heaven.
We visited the Princess Anne walkway on Sat. and saw street vendors and locals playing dominos. It felt a little like I would imagine Cuba.
Upon exiting the car, Parker grabbed an empty gallon water jug and it became his ‘scuba floaty’ for the next couple days.
The beach was teaming with life at Del Mar – we found a hermit crab, lots of bright green seaweed, conch shells, clams, etc.
Saturday we left the countryside of Luquillo and went into the ‘new’ city part of San Juan into a part called Condado. Our hotel and this part of the city was upscale with restaurants, well-to-do Puerto Ricans, and expensive cars.
BTW – even though it is a US territory, apparently they don’t have the equivalent to the DMV in PR. We would see cars on the interstate missing mirrors, smashed in front windows, wrecked rear ends with no working lights or bumpers, etc.
Parkers favorite thing at Condado was stealing plastic cups and taking them into the pool to play with. The staff probably removed 20 plastic cups from the pool after we left…
Skylar was our ‘foodie’ on this trip. She loved the food tour and wanted to try coconut water at LaConcha. It wasn’t very sweet – sort of salty with a slight hint of coconut. I don’t think the coconut was ripe 🙁
