Virginia Beach

Darin has quite a bit of vacation time to burn before he gets out of the Army, so we decided to take a trip to Virginia Beach. We had a blast!! We spent time with the Clifford's, great friends from medical school. They have kids very close in age to ours and the kids had a wonderful time together. Kierstin idolizes Isabelle (who is 5 and as cute as they come). Garrett and Gavin had so much fun with the boys (Alec ~11, Riley 9, and Will 7). Garrett decided that they should be our cousins and aspires to someday play soccer as good as Alec. Gavin really enjoyed our visit to Operation Smile. He was very impressed and gave a very nice report about Op Smile to his classmates. My parents met us in VA Beach, the kids had the ultimate vacation - Yaya and Grandpa AND friend-cousins!
We went to the beach - the water was freezing. Garrett didn't seem to mind too much, Gavin went in a little. Kierstin got her toes wet and accidentally got really wet and really cold when she got tumbled by a wave while getting her toes wet.
We went to the Aquarium, got to pet stingrays and horseshoe crabs, saw some sharks and escaped the rain!
Another rainy day we spent at the Children's Museum in Portsmouth. The kids had fun exploring all the hands on stuff and pretending.
When the sun resurfaced we went to Williamsburg (with everyone else - I was amazed at how crowded it was!). I think Garrett probably enjoyed it the most, which surprised us. I thought Gavin would be fascinated, but he couldn't get over how hot he was and how crowded it was. Garrett was into all the old fashioned stuff. When we first got there, we were walking down a street and there was a house where the 'garage' was open, I think it was a leather shop or something. Anyway, you could see things kind of piled in the 'garage' and Garrett went running ahead saying, "Look, it's an old fashioned garage sale." Everything he saw was old fashioned....old fashioned roads, houses, books, toys, ice cream, etc. We spent alot of time at the blacksmith and Garrett asked about 20 questions and decided he might want to be a blacksmith when he grows up.
We also went on a boat tour of the Norfolk Naval Yard, saw lots of really big ships and spent the afternoon at the Nauticus museum and the USS Wisconsin.
Rod and Sherry left Saturday and we met up with the Cliffords for a last day of fun. We watched Will's ball game, went to Brigette's parents house where the boys jet skiied and boated, then went to play on a beach on the Chesapeake Bay, and finally cooked out at the Clifford's house. We had a fantastic time - thanks Clifford Clan!!!