Spring Break 2022

3/30/22 to 4/9/22

Hi Blog!

It has been a very busy couple of weeks. We had many adventures and we would like to share just a few with you.

It all started when we picked William up from School on Wednesday, March 30th to start his Spring Break vacation. Unfortunately, his parents Matt and Weina had to work. On Thursday, we dropped the cats at the vet for their annual checkup and boarding and drove from Bull Run to Philadelphia to help our daughter Katie celebrate her 40th birthday.

On Friday, we did a little shopping and William found these daffodils. As Katie's birthday is in the beginning of April, daffodils always symbolize her birthday.

We spent the rest of Friday playing board games, walking the puppies, reading Harry Potter and eating pizza! Matt and Weina were finally able to join us late Friday night.

The weekend went by in a blur. First, we had Katie's Picnic Birthday Bash in Fairmount Park on Saturday. On Sunday, we attended our friend John Zoller's 70th Birthday Extravaganza at the Blue Bell Country Club. While we were at John's party, Katie and William went to the Franklin Institute and toured the new Harry Potter exhibit. On Monday, we drove back to Bull Run Campground.

Once we retrieved the cats and got everyone settled in the RV, we had a few hours without rain to try our hand at Disc Golf. We managed to complete 9 holes before deciding to give our throwing arms a rest, since this was William's first time tossing discs.

On the way back to camp, we decided to follow the Bluebell Loop Trail.

The native range for Virginia bluebells includes most of eastern North America. They grows naturally as far north as Quebec and Ontario and south to Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. They are particularly abundant along Cub Run and Bull Run here near Manassas, Virginia.

After nine holes of disc golf and 2 miles of hiking, it was lights out!

Everyone in the family has been bitten by the Wordle bug. William does not have a phone or computer, so he usually talks his mom into letting him borrow her phone. We decided to save a little screen time by doing a written wordle. It worked so well, we did it every morning.

You should know that Spring Break wasn't all fun and games. William had to earn a few badges during the week. The first one was the meal planning and grocery shopping badge. After deciding what we would eat all week, he made a grocery shopping list and we proceeded to the nearby Giant supermarket where he filled the cart with everything we would need for the week.  He barely survived:

With steady rain in the forecast, we needed some indoor activity. William told us about Super, Awesome and Amazing, an indoor gym complex near his school that they use for PE when the weather is bad. Since it was Spring Break, the schools wouldn't be using it, so we called and made a reservation. Our wrist bands gave us one hour to blow off steam. William decided to catch some air.

We joined William in the nerf gun obstacle course, where we were soundly defeated by him and the other children running around the obstacles. Having exhausted ourselves, we let William swing on the ninja course while we recuperated.

On Wednesday, we managed to get in a bike ride to Harper's Ferry. We did a separate blog on that adventure. On Thursday, it was another day of steady rain. We started with an outing to a local bowling alley. 

After bowling, we went to Two Silos Brewing for lunch. After lunch it was more indoor activities including skeeball, basketball shoot, baseball throw and arcade games. William earned enough points to collect a few items from the gift shop.

By evening, the rain had let up just enough that we could start a campfire and cook hotdogs and veggie burgers. Below, William puts his wood splitting skill to use.

The result was a roaring fire, delicious dogs and burgers and a dessert of Reeses cup s'mores!

One of the prizes William picked up at the arcade was a mini-bowling set. We used a cookie sheet to contain the action and proceeded to bowl an entire game.

William came in first. YeYe was second and NaiNai came in 3rd.

On Friday, we took all of William's stuff back to his house and jumped on the Metro to visit the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in DC. After a week of rain, we weren't sure what that big bright thing in the sky was.

One of the reasons we picked the Museum of Natural History was the rocks. Both Kathy and William love pretty, shiny rocks.

Kathy's birth stone is Topaz.

Friday night we had a great goodbye dinner with all the Arlington Scrantons. We bid them a fond fairwell as we will not see them again until Memorial Day when we return from our trip to Arkansas.

Before leaving Bull Run, we drove up to Frederick, Maryland on Saturday afternoon to see Kathy's nephew Ryan in a high school production of Matilda. We were really impressed with the entire program. If we didn't know it was a high school, we could have sworn we were on Broadway.

Since Ryan had a second performance that evening, he was required to stay at school.  After the matinee, we lunch with Kathy's brother Steve, mother-in-law Patsy, and Lea Ann's brother Buck and his family. A good time was had by all.

Cheers!