A Quick Visit from the Paquette Cousins

They stopped through Charlottesville on their way home to NY from North Carolina. The boys had a great time playing and we all enjoyed an ice cream outing to Kohr Brothers:

Tubing on the James

This was an August Bucket List item that we had hoped to do as a family, but timing conspired against us and Benji and I ended up doing it just the two of us one afternoon after camp. We drove down to Scottsville to meet up with the outfitter, who then drove us to an upriver spot on the James River from which we would launch. From there, it was a lazy 3 hour drift down the river to the pull out spot (which was close to where we parked the car). A lot of these pictures are hazy because I had my phone in a bag, but I tried to take a few without it at the end so you can see what a beautiful day it was. We spotted lots of big birds on the river and just enjoyed talking and relaxing without any interruptions:

Bellair Farm PYO trip

We re-joined our favorite CSA this year, despite the fact that we would miss several mid-summer pick-ups due to our trip (we gifted them to friends). One perk of the membership is the ability to visit the farm any day to pick your own veggies and flowers in the PYO fields. We chose a beautiful (but hot and humid) Saturday to stop by and pick some cherry tomatoes and a flower bouquet:

Benji was upset not to be in the first flower picture, so I asked him to pose with the sunflowers. Both the last of the wilty sunflowers and that this was the best picture I could get are a little bit sad

Peach Picking 2019

We decided to hit the Sunset Thursdays window, where we could pick peaches at a beautiful time of night while a band played on the deck:

 After picking, we decided to enjoy some peach ice cream on the lawn:

Abby and Kevin had theirs on top of fresh peach pie

One of the radio stations had the NCAA trophies on display

First Day of School 2019

I've still got a bit of summer to catch up on, but wanted to post first day of school pictures close to the actual day:

First Day of 10th

First Day of 6th

PVCC

Benji did 2 weeks of camp at the community college (PVCC) to finish out the summer. The first was on Minecraft mods and the second on Python programming. Both weeks ended with a short expo for the parents to show off their work:

Benji's chatbot, which drops an anvil on your avatar if you say you like the Red Sox

Belated Birthday Celebration

Since we did not have a chance to celebrate with Gammy while on the road, we had a little late birthday dinner for Abby on the next Sunday:

CHAMPS 2019

After a quiet week of getting back on track post-vacation, Benji swam in the JSL Championship meet on the last Saturday in July. He swam 50 free and 50 breast, which are both early races, so we were in and out in an hour:

On the blocks

Race #1. He was hoping for a time improvement but swam his seed time exactly

Breast stroke

Huge 9 second time improvement here

The week after Champs, we had the swim team banquet, where Benji got his trophy:

See you next year, Swordfish!

Happy Birthday. Kevin (#44)

We got home on Sunday night and Tuesday was Kevin's birthday, so we had a quiet at-home birthday dinner with Ben and Jerry's cake, which is what he requested:

Lakes Road Trip 2019: Headed to NY (Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Albany and West Nyack)

We set out for our last day of vacation (Friday, 7/19) on the early side and started making our way into NY. We made a short stop just over the lake to see Crown Point. Two different forts were built here by colonists because of its strategic location at the narrows of Lake Champlain. The first Fort Saint Frederic was built by the French, who retreated and destroyed their fort to keep it out of the hands of the British during the 7 years war. The second, Fort Crown Point was built by the British and eventually captured by the colonists during the Revolutionary War. The remains of both forts still stand:

Cool bridge over the narrows sits behind the ruins of Fort Frederic

Part of the ruins of Fort Crown Point

Closer look at the French ruins

Although the fort was super cool, we only spent a little time there because we wanted to get on to Ticonderoga. We ended up getting to Ticonderoga on the early side, though, and had a little time to explore before the main attraction. We went looking for sites related to the pencil company and found this - the falls Dixon-Ticonderoga used to power their original mill (and interpretive sign):

And bonus covered bridge in the same park

It was finally time to head over to the Star Trek set, which had been the impetus for this leg of the trip:

Even the outside was cool:

shuttlecraft recreated

 

I really liked this miniature of the sets that included the officers

The gift shop:

Benji found some tribbles, to his amusement (we had the kids watch The Trouble with Tribbles the night before in preparation, so this was perfect)

Original uniforms

Even the sign on the bathroom was awesome

The actual sets were fantastic! Just like being on the show, and the tour guide had lots of interesting behind the scenes information:

Sick Bay

Benji got to be the one to set off a Red Alert

Conference Room

McCoy's Office

Captain Kirk's quarters

Engineering

Warp core

Turbolift onto the bridge

The bridge

We all took a turn in the captain's chair

Benji at Mr Spock's science consul

We got moving a little before lunch and made it to Lake George before stopping to eat. We made one last stop on the trip home - Albany! Having seen so many state houses on the trip, Abby was committed to at least getting a peek at this one. We decided to park and walk around it for a few minutes, but not take a tour:

We made it to West Nyack for dinner, after a stop in Middletown to visit with Uncle Art and Aunt Tina. We had a relaxing day on Saturday, topped off with a family birthday celebration for Abby and Kevin's birthdays (complete with Pop-pop's pasta):

Abby got a card from Harper

Harper, enjoying her birthday cupcake while Uncle Kevin looks on

Birthday girl with Grandma and Pop-pop

On Sunday morning, we headed home (at long last)!