If you’ve been to Virginia before, you know there usually is Virginia for lovers, not parents, so shut down this blog post if you were hoping for something a little more romantic. Our first official 24 hours of vacation started with a great set of calls;

• 7 am call from alarm company – yay, exciting sleep in of exactly 20 minutes from the typical school day. Thankfully, it appeared to be false or a ghost flying around.
• Then subsequent news that our refrigerator somehow stopped working the night before
• that our credit card was lost so we should cancel all of them
• that Rosie had a seizure overnight in the kennel.

At this point, I was seriously contemplating going back – bad karma. Nope, next morning up to Virginia – and with a slight hope that there won’t be any more bad news. Brian had the great-on-paper sentimental idea to stop by Hampton, Virginia to show off his old house, school and town he grew up. Nice in theory – and we certainly did it all – in 10 minutes of drive by. We did have a nice lunch in my father-in-law’s retirement home which overlooks Norfolk, Atlantic ocean and in general has a fabulous view of the water. We were also the only people under 80 at the lunch there which made me very self-conscious of any noise anyone made – and we sure make a lot – but we survived – and so did the retirees. Off to Williamsburg to another Holiday Inn ! We loved Williamsburg… here is why..

• how can you beat Busch Gardens – pure joy for everyone! Awesome roller coasters, water, great food, fast passes  – we tried every coaster we could – and there are some AMAZING ones. My personal favorite (which I tried on my own was Griffon and Verbolten) – you never think those things can get scarier and they do very unexpected things!
• we should have purchased the Colonial tickets – big mistake. We thought the kids would be too bored walking through it all but the most interesting part is actually the part you have to pay for. So we walked around, with 3 very unimpressed kids who wanted to go in and do all the paid-for projects. Well, lesson learned…
• William & Mary college is beautiful and walking around the campus makes you want to go back to school… even Lucas was impressed
• the hotels are finally figuring out how to keep families interested and happy clients…. TVs in restaurants, big rooms where 5 sleep comfortably, pool for tired midgets, very good and large breakfast…. someone finally realized that families want to travel to and they should cater to them as well – so bravo!
• Excellent dinner, service and location for Berrett’s restaurant right in the center… great seafood after all day of walking
• Little extra shopping in outlets for things we forgotten – because yes, it was about 50F ! See next post on our below freezing DC biking…