I have finally made it to the sixth and final installment of our summer adventures! In Maryland, Clarissa had a chance to catch up with her younger cousins, aunt, uncle, and my parents. We had a couple weeks of cousin fun. In SC, Clarissa's cousins are Mason's age - so she's trying to keep up; in MO, Clarissa's cousin graduated a few year back and is grown; in MD having cousins that are a couple years younger....definitely the most fun!
One day we went out to
Historic St. Mary's - Maryland's first capital. There has been a lot of archaeological research done to reconstruct buildings with historic accuracy. One building we went into was the Print House - original owned by William Nuthead, Maryland's first printer.
This is obviously a reenactor (and not the real Mr. Nuthead) but he showed us how the real press worked and let the kids use it to make a contract!
It was hard work pressing it down hard enough!
But when down, there was two copies of the contract printed, one for each person signing it to get and keep! Which was cut and both of the 'cousin printers' got a copy!
We played some old time games (like through the corn cob through the grapevine hoop).
We checked out some more old buildings as well as a refurbished ship that was docked. Some camps/groups get to take trips on the ship apparently.
Cousins in a tree!
There was a good bit of walking but all the cousins did good.
When we had been in St. Louis and had gone to the trampoline park Clarissa ended up bruising a foot bone! At the time we didn't know that (we'd already gone to a doc-in-box and ruled out a break), so after our day of walking it was really hurting. So the next day, we went for an x-ray to rule out a fracture (and found out about the above bruising). We then went bulk shopping for someone's birthday party!
There was a photo booth at the birthday party...I see an uneven distribution of photo booth props on the cousins!! The much anticipated cake time (we had gotten the cake the day before and asked/sweet talked the woman at Costco to ice a birthday message on top. It's a little disconcerting when you see the face of the knife holder ready to cut the cake! It has provide many a laugh!!
The next day, Clarissa got to ride in a Cessna plane!! She was the co-pilot!
Posing!
Getting clearance for their flight from air traffic control.
If something less than favorable would have happened, this photo would have haunted me forever!
Plane starting to taxi.
Lift off!
Super high in the high sky. I may or may not got in a debate with my nephew as to how high they were in the sky (I said no, they were not 30,000 feet like big jets....).
We celebrated the successful flight and landing with some lunch, a trip to target, and then some Sweet Frog!!
We also had a couple fun days! We went to a water park one day and then we went to the local beach. I had found some info about it and the cousins had already been once....we went to
Brownie's beach and since Clarissa is a Girl Scout brownie...naturally we had to go....and we could find shark's teeth!! Which we did (and a few pieces of sea glass)!
One day, we drove to Virginia and met one of Clarissa's friends from Fiji!! Her friend was stateside from Madagascar for a bit!!
The girls had a blast at Chuck'E'Cheese while the moms caught up. Then we continued the fun with some more frozen yogurt at Sweet Frog again (Clarissa had 4 coupons and was determined to use all 4!).
Mason flew back in from Texas. I somehow had a funny filter on at the airport (drawback of letting little people use your phone - btw Grandpa's make great subjects for fun filters).
Mason had a day in Maryland and fit in some cousin and grandparent time.
We squeezed in for a selfie! Lol. There were lots of giggly fails.....
Then the kids and I headed back to South Carolina. It rained a good portion of the drive back. Apparently, the weather gods felt that living in the desert deemed it necessary to pour rain on me every time I drove in the US...lol. It was a pretty bad storm...so bad that it knocked a pine tree down into the road and was blocking traffic. Have no fear....being in the south - there were some good ole boys with their pickup truck who were able to pull the tree out the way.
Note we aren't that far back! Either a lot of people turned around or that tree had fallen just a few minutes before!! Eek!
We had a couple days in South Carolina. I got all the suitcases all packed up, saw a couple more friends, and we headed back on the Charleston - London - Doha routing. The flights were full. Since a lot of Europe holidays in August that wasn't a complete surprise. When looking around at the gate, most of the people on our flight were UK citizens, not a lot of blue passport holders. Once back in Doha, we had about two weeks to get over jet lag before school started (though my job had started so I immediately dove into catching up/climbing up the learning curve).
Someone was too busy to stop for a photo on the first day, but she did pose for retake in January...so that was our R&R for 2019....only six blog posts six months late...lol. We're now starting to plan 2020's R&R....but who's really counting....I'll try and be better this year....no promises.
