Saturday in Virginia

I have been waiting to take this picture for simply, years!!! Every single time Leia Rose and Shenandoah get together in Virginia, their favorite thing to play is "Beach." And here they are! Before any of us know what's happening, the girls are in their "bathing suits" (which simply consists of stripping down to thier underwear) jumping off of the "diving board" (the bear foot-stool) into the "water" (the blue blanket). Today there was an addition of a cool "surf board" (the storage box top) and . . .
. . . a "crab" (Annie)!!
Later, the big girls and the daddies went to the Children's Museum, which had a really cool dinosaur exhibit. Here are the girls digging up some dinosaur bones.
Then it was time to come back home and play, play, play in the yard. The girls had a ball first making "leaf skirts." They just took some regular scotch tape and used it to tape leaves together around their waists. Here's Leia Rose proudly wearing hers.

Another big activity of the weekend was climbing trees! (Leia has fallen in love with this lately.) Here she is in the Worrel's front crapemyrtle.
Ah yes, and then there was "collecting wood to make a house." This was the beginning of a two-day project. First, the girls ran to the wooded area in the center of the culda-sac and collected all of the wood they could find. (Here's their pile.) It was quite a challenge to get them to truly get them to look both ways (or as Leia and I say it, "Look left, right, and left again") every single time they crossed the road. And, I'll admit, that Shenandoah was so much better than Leia! (What happened to being on the safe side?!?)

Then later they needed to actually "build" the house. So when they were told they couldn't use a real hammer, they improvised and got out the croquet mallets! : )

To finish up this post, I just had to include Leia's and Shenan's made-up surfing song for their "Beach."

I also wanted to mention how and why this trip came about. The last time the girls and I visited VA (which wasn't too long ago), I came by myself with both girls which was quite a challenge. Next time I vowed to spend the night and have Brian come along. More importantly, though, Leia Rose asked to visit again before her birthday. I had observed her good behavior the entire day and promised her that we would. And Leia and I always share the same refrain about things like this, "Mamma always keeps her promises." So, here we are!