We wanted to take the girls to see the Biltmore house. What girl wouldn’t want to see a real castle. In addition we recently read a fictional story that takes place at the house at the turn of the century. We wanted to see the house details that were in the story. Our tour time was for the afternoon and we arrived with time to see a storm brewing close by. To our great luck the rain did not start until we entered the home and it ended before we exited the home.

Nothing shows the grandness of the house more than the scale of each room and space.

The spaces inside and out were decorated with beautiful plants and flowers.

Watch out where you go, you might find a lion that will sneeze on you. There is a family photo of the Vanderbilts around this lion with Mr. V sitting on top of the statue. It was great to see that they lived and loved their house as a home and did not treat it only as a museum. The pair of lions were referenced in the story we read so we needed our own family photo by one.

The house was amazing! Not that we didn’t expect to be impressed, but the grandness was evident in every room. One special gift for us was that someone played the pipe organ while we visited the first floor. The music moved into the rooms we were in just like we were in the same room as the organ. Our favorites were (Robby) the library, (Emily) the library and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Room, (Julia) the whole house, and (Rachelle) the billiard room.

The house was to be lived in and enjoyed. It had its own bowling alley. Maybe one day there will be a tour that allows people to play a bit.

The stairway was inside and built into the outside. Two of each window sets were “doors” that could open and allow access to the balcony outside and allow fresh air into the house when needed. What cool detail.

Part of the “working” farm included sunflowers planted along a crop line.

Old Faithful in the cool morning

When picking out locations to show Emily the effects of the magma on the Earth, we put Yellowstone high on our list of must see places. The park is huge and has a lot of different examples of active volcanic effects including geysers, boiling mud, and hot springs. We spent several days at Yellowstone so that we could view both the wildlife and the thermal features at a relaxed pace and rest at bit from our mad dash across the US to that point. We stayed at the historic Old Faithful Lodge just steps from a geyser area. From that location we visited some of the other areas of the park. We saw bison, a black bear, a wolf, and an elk. The animal viewing was nothing in comparison to the fall animal displays we have seen in years past, but for the girls it was perfect.

We knew that the weather would still be cool while we visited. Because of the elevation the evenings were still close to freezing. There was still snow in areas and quite a bit of ice on the lakes. We made good use of our coats and sweatshirts. The best hike of the trip was down to a viewing point of the lower falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We were not sure how the girls would do, but they were willing to give it a try. Before starting back up we discussed the idea of slow and steady to reach the end. Julia took the advice to heart and slow and never-stopping hiked the steep incline to the top. Emily kept right with her. They definitely beat the parents! We were so proud of their effort!

at Castle Geyser – We had passed this geyser earlier in the day and saw the sign with the estimated time for the next eruption. Emily watched the time so that we could go back and see it. She was very pleased when we made it in time.

The all important bison also known as bicey to Julia. The day we entered the park and she saw her first five live-living-free-bison she declared the day to be the “best day ever”.

the Edwards girls all looking at the camera. the girls both picked out matching sweatshirts from the park and loved matching each other.

the only way we could get Julia to take this photo was with Emily promising to hold her up. she was a bit afraid that she would fall backward.

just a silly morning photo of the girls in our rustic room in new jammies.

When traveling we often find hidden themes or repeated things in what we see. Finding granite was one of these repeated things. Mt Rushmore is a very large piece of art chiseled into a granite mountain top. This was the first example of granite we found. Mt Rushmore is found south of Rapid City, SD in the Black Hills.

There had been quite a bit of rain on this travel day, and we were also chasing the sun and extending when our evenings started as we went. The consequence of this was that the girls were way past bedtime and exhausted. They did not enjoy this stop as much as we had hoped. We took the loop walk around to the base of the Presidents and saw some of the museum exhibits. The videos on how they did the carving was pretty interesting to the girls. This was a good opportunity to talk about each of the presidents and what they contributed to our country. The stop took about two hours and was a great way to stretch our legs.

This year we spent our spring break at home playing.

Our first day was spent just getting chores done so we could play the rest of the week. This involved a trip to the grocery. Lately the kids have been making trips in the car-cart a lot of trouble, but after lots of pleading and promising Mama gave them another try. They were angels and despite not fitting well together we finished the shopping with peace. Hurray!

The next day we met some friends at the zoo and braved a cold morning. By the time we make it to the playground area it warmed up and all the jackets were off. The highlight for the day was playing playing with our friends and the second highlight was playing together at the playground. Never fear, we did walk past a few animals.

All the girls can fit on the lion, kind-of.

The next day we had big plans … then we threw them out and just played at our friends’ house. The mamas sewed these Elsa dresses while the girls played. Once they got the dresses on they sang almost every song from Frozen while watching videos of the songs.

What is a week of play without ice cream? Of course we had to go! We sat at the soda fountain counter and enjoyed milkshakes. Emily had a pineapple/strawberry shake. Julia had a strawberry shake. And mama had a cookie shake. While we ate them we discussed a movie we recently saw that had a scene where the girl did exactly what we were doing.

Our last day of break was spent with an evening at Frozen Head State Park. We picked daddy up from work and took sandwiches with us.

We made it to a stream on our hike and played around the bridge. We also looked for animals in the stream. There was a frog we found waiting for a bug to float by. When the hike was over we enjoyed our dinner and then an hour at the playground.

While we love to travel we enjoyed our stay at home too. It was nice for Emily to see friends she misses while she is at school. Julia enjoyed having Emily home to play with, at least most of the time.

It was a good year! Looking forward to the memorable and everyday moments of 2014.

All Aboard!

We rode Amtrak’s Auto Train between Virginia and Florida to skip a bit of the driving on the trip and to have a cool experience. We boarded in the afternoon on one day and got off the next morning enjoying two meals and one night on the train.

The girls waiting outside of our car to board.

We had two rooms reserved for the trip and they were across the aisle from each other. We discovered, as a great side benefit of this occurrence, that the girls could play in one room with the door closed and the parents could relax in the other room in quiet. It didn’t seem that we got to spend much time in the room just hanging out because of the early dinner reservation and early bedtime for the girls.

Mama and Julia were room buddies. She enjoyed setting up all of her toys just the way she wanted it. We were given small water bottles which she thought was just her size.

Daddy and Emily were room buddies. Robby decided to let Emily have her wish to sleep on the top bunk. This way he got to enjoy watching out the window as the world sped by.

We caught Emily just watching the world go by from the dining car. It doesn’t look like she ate much food, but she had eaten her salad and bread first and was waiting for dessert. Julia was so tired from skipping her nap that she fell asleep eating dinner and got her dessert later in our train car.

Julia slept on the bottom bunk and felt like a queen doing it. Only once did she check on Mama. She slept the whole night like it was nothing. This proved to be a great experience and was a nice way to cover the miles. The girls want to know why there are no other auto-trains that go places that we can visit. Mama and Daddy would be ok with that too!