Our Vacation

Okay, now for our vacation story. I will just hit some of the highlights so that I won't bore you to death of the entire trip.

It was quite a long vacation; longest I've ever been on. I don't think I've ever missed two Lord's Days in a row at Heritage (if I have, I don't remember it), and I have never missed my church family so much! The people at the other churches we went to (more on that in a moment) were nice and friendly, but it just wasn't the same. The first Lord's Day we went to Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and it would have been a good experience had we not had all the bad experiences. I'll start from the beginning. We got up and left the house with plenty of time to spare. Things were going well until we were on the interstate and all of a sudden we pass the 'Welcome to New Jersey' sign! That wasn't really supposed to happen. Our directions were...um...backwards. We did eventually make it into Philadelphia, with time left to get to church. Except we couldn't find a parking spot. After driving around for awhile, Dad finally dropped us off at the door to find a parking spot and then meet up with us later, while we went in to find somewhere to sit. That's when bad experience number three came along. The auditorium was full! We ended up in the basement watching the service on a TV. It didn't feel like worship at all. Not many Psalms, no communion; it didn't even feel like the Lord's Day.

The next week was much, much better. We went to All Saint's Presbyterian Church where there was a much more liturgical worship service very similar to ours. We enjoyed singing the psalms and once more partaking of communion; it was a little more like home.

Well those were our Lord's Days. Kind of night and day difference between the two, but I'll get on with the rest of our adventures.

We toured the Amish countryside a lot and it was so neat to see all the horse and buggies out, even on cold and rainy days, and all the men working in the fields with their horses, and a lot of times there were young boys who were doing the all the work. We saw a young man steering about eight or ten horses at a time and there was no one supervising or watching over him like many other children would have needed. We also went into a few of the Amish shops and bought a few things. It was kind of neat: no electricity, but plenty of light and plenty warm. The Amish people were very interesting to watch. In talking to them, it was just like talking with anyone else. They didn't make us feel uncomfortable because we didn't do things the way they did and they didn't seem shy because they were different from us. All their children were very cute and extremely well behaved. We stopped to ask directions of a boy, probably about twelve years old, and he was very communicative and got us to where we needed to go. It was actually quite amazing.

We took a trip over to Gettysburg one day and that was a neat experience. We took a driving tour of the battlefield and it was amazing at how they had preserved it all and kept it up. While it was a great learning time, it was also a little sad to look out over the fields and think that's where many men and boys died. And it was also sad to think that the South lost that battle...

Another day we went over to Hershey, Pennsylvania. We stepped out of the car and the air smelled like chocolate! Mmmmm... What a wonderful scent! I really feel for those of you who don't like chocolate! We took a little tour of how chocolate was made and then, of course, we had to go buy some! Unfortunately, though, we didn't get to tour the actual factory; they stopped those tours back in 1973; something we didn't realize till we got there. Oh well.

On our way back from Hershey, we made a very important stop at Cabela's. That was actually a really fun store. We spent a few hours there looking at all the different animals (trophy deer, world record bears and numerous others) and hunting gear, guns and knives, and just about anything else you can think of. According to Daddy, it was a glorified Bass Pro Shops.

A trip to Washington D.C. came a little later. We saw the capitol and the Washington monument, but never got around to seeing the white house. We did get to go to some of the Smithsonian museums which were pretty neat. I've never seen so many gems and jewels in one place before! Although we had a good trip, the little ones' favorite part was riding the Metro in and out of the city. And by the end of the day, even us older ones were looking forward to going back.

Alright, now I'm trying to think of what else we did. I know we rented a couple of movies and watched them. One was Over the Hedge which was a cute story. The other was Hidalgo and that one was really good. Speaking of movies, I just have to say that I was able to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies. The Fellowship I watch in the car on the way up, and the other two I watched on the way back home. I've always wanted to do that but never had the opportunity.

Although we had a wonderful vacation, we are so glad to be back home again. We took about 450 pictures, which is a little much to put here, so I think I'm going to have to make a slideshow and post a link to it here. I will find a way for y'all to get to see them and hopefully it won't be too long before I do it.

~~~~~Book/Box Guessing Game Results~~~~~

Well, folks, we have a winner (sort of) for the guessing game I put out a little while back. I ended up packing 45 boxes of Daddy's books, but there were a few more that Daddy either left out or packed up himself. It may have been more like 46 or 47 boxes total, but I packed 45. So it is Mrs. Stouffer who gets my congratulations!!! Good guessing!!!

Sorry Amy, but since you guessed after I told you the answer, your guess doesn't count!