Quarantine Bucket List

 We gave the kids this scratch off poster for Christmas and finally decided to hang it in the dining room. We were delighted to find that we had already completed a good number of the activities, so we took turns scratching them off:

Carter's Mountain Sunset

 We headed up for one of their Wind Down Wednesday Events last week, which turned out to be delightful. They had a fun cover band playing mellow music (John Denver, the Indigo Girls, James Taylor, etc.), food trucks and ice cream treats, and an amazing sunset:

Both kids willingly agreed to take selfies

Hard to resist taking pictures

As we were leaving, we could see the full moon rising on the other side of the barns

View from the parking lot

Buford Engineering Expo

 For the first two weeks after school ends, Buford offers an engineering academy for rising 8th and 9th graders. Abby first participated in this back in 2017, again in 2018, and then has served as a mentor to the younger students in it for the last three years. In his role as iStem coordinator, Kevin started teaching part of the academy last year and this year, Benji was able to participate as well. So, all three of them have been busy engineering and on Thursday they got to show off what they have done:

Benji showing off the remote control car his team built

And their individual tutorial project of a marble maze

Abby's mentee team showing me their electric piano

Benji's team presenting their projects to someone else

Father's Day 2021

 We had a pretty chill day. We started with fresh baked croissants and gifts, but then Kevin wanted to get some chores done in between watching the Yankees game and the college world series. In the late afternoon, we headed to the Tom Sox game at CHS, which we left as it headed into extra innings. We ended with dinner at Christian's on the downtown mall and ice cream at Kilwin's:

Breakfast and gifts

At the game

High fives from Lewie (Prairieweather Lewis)

He was hamming it up

Ballpark selfie

Outdoor Movie Night: Hamilton

 For the end of the year, Benji's US History class started watching Hamilton. They did not get all the way through it, and Benji requested that we watch it again at home. This seemed like a good excuse to break out the outdoor projector and watch it on the big screen, which turned out to be a great call. It was so much fun to watch it outside, and we made movie snacks to enrich the experience:

Juneteenth Trip: Richmond

We were trying to plan a fun family outing to celebrate the day that we were all fully vaccinated (Wednesday, June 16th). As it turned out, Benji had a swim meet that night, but we all had Friday off for the Juneteenth holiday. We decided to delay our celebration so that we could have a full day of fun and planned a day in Richmond for Friday. We started the day with tea at the Jefferson Hotel:

The Palm Room, where they used to keep live alligators

After tea, we made out way to Hollywood Cemetery:

Taking in the Confederate Section

Just rows and rows of numbered graves

Weird pyramid/monument to confederate dead

President John Tyler's grave

President James Monroe's grave

We decided to check out the Richmond history museum, the Valentine, next:

We had a little more time before dinner, so last we headed to the nearby Poe Museum in Shockoe Bottom. It is just a few rooms, but they were very interesting:

We ended at Addis, our favorite Ethiopian place:

June Universal Yums: South Korea