Old-Fashioned

I decided to brave the summer Saturday crowds at Colonial Williamsburg recently, because Saturday is the only day to see the fife and drum parade. Turns out, the crowds were fine -- but the traffic! Well, we managed to make it in time to see most of the parade, and it was actually nice not to walk the entire length of Duke of Gloucester street (twice) with three littles in tow. 

In my mind, I see Williamsburg in vignettes -- and that's how I tend to take pictures there, too. I've taken my share of "landscapes" (how many pictures of the Governor's Palace does one really need?), but most often I find myself closer. And these are inevitably the pictures I'm most pleased with at the end of the day.

Incidentally, my pictures would turn out much better if there weren't so many tourists! Which is, I daresay, exactly what all of those people with cameras are thinking of the pictures they took (in which I feature with my own camera!). *wink*  

I am quite taken with the fuzzy-knobbed heads and the furrowed bovine expressions of this pair:

I thought to bring along some books, and before we left we plopped down in the shade of a tree on the Palace green and read together, while Laddie moseyed about. I'd recently gotten Mary Geddy's Day in the mail, and it was well worth the $4 it cost used. We got to tour the Geddy house on this visit, which the littles were quite excited about! They even tried their hand at a game of "Put and Take," or "Captain Morgan's Revenge." 

The other book we brought along was A Horse's Tale: A Colonial Williamsburg Adventure, which is a sweet little rhyming story that I found at our local library. I'm not sure I'll purchase this one, since it's so easy to borrow -- but it was the perfect read for our visit!

 Rosa very excitedly pointed out a town crier who was announcing an auction while we were there -- just like the book (though minus the tail and whiskers!).

After our stories, we had a game of tag on the green, spent some time watching an enormous ant hurrying frantically to nowhere-in-particular, and finally made our way back to the van. More traffic on the way home (maybe we'll nix summer Saturday visits in future...), but well worth it. I'm seeing a wagon in our future, as the kids' energy tends to flag long before I'm ready to go...