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I love reading aloud to my children. I also love being read to. The night before my wedding, I was very concerned about being able to fall asleep, so my mom curled up beside me and read Madeleine L'Engle's Meet the Austins to me until I fell asleep. I don't know at what point in childhood we stopped reading at bedtime. I am certain we kept it going as long as possible and I definitely begged her to read special Christmas stories to me well into my teens. Many of the books I remember best from childhood were not books I read myself, but books that my mom read to me. 

A few years ago I read the memoir The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma and was very moved by the book. The book tells the story of a father and daughter who made a pact to read together every night. They kept their streak going from fourth grade until the day he dropped her off at college. Their family went through many difficulties during this period--including the mother leaving the family--but the nightly reading kept the father and daughter connected. 

While nightly reading used to be a solid part of our family life, we have struggled recently. Meg and Clare are older. They often want to read their own books before bed. Anne prefers a few picture books, while Meg and Clare want chapter books. But perhaps our biggest struggle has been meeting expectations. For almost a year, we read through the Chronicles of Narnia. Each night the girls waited anxiously to hear what would happen next to the Pevensies or cousin Eustace and Jill. When we finished one book, there was no question that we would pick up the next book in the series. It was all so easy. 

We also have many fun memories from reading the Narnia series. One evening, my parents who were visiting sat quietly with us and listened to several chapters with the girls. A friend hosted as book club meeting about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which the kids discussed the book and ate Turkish Delight. As you can see from the picture above, as we were finishing the series, we moved outside and read by our Narnia lamppost (though, as I recall, the bugs were a bit distracting to the girls). 

Since finishing the Narnia series, no one can agree on a book to read. We'll start a book and then the kids lose interest. We've continued to listen to books together on CD in the car. As I mentioned here, we are currently listening to the Penderwick books and all three girls are enjoying it. I, of course, still read lots of picture books to Anne. But something still seems to be missing. I guess I long to be Mrs. Austin from Meet the Austins reading classic children's books to her four kids, who ranged widely in age, each night before bed. 

If anyone has suggestions for a great series to read aloud to the girls, please comment below. I'd love to hear them. 

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I kicked this summer off with a weekend of reading. May had been a very busy month. We had Meg's First Communion, piano recitals, a ballet recital, our parish festival, Clare's birthday party, and a few more things thrown in. When Memorial Day arrived, I declared I would be spending the weekend reading and so I did.

I started my holiday weekend off with The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick. 

I loved this book and read it quite quickly. Arthur Pepper is mourning the death of his wife to whom he had been married for forty years. He has managed his grief by following a strict daily routine. On the one year anniversary of his wife's death, he begins to clean out her clothes for donation and he finds a charm bracelet he has never before seen. As he investigates the charms, he discovers the life his wife had lived in the years before they met--a life about which she has never told him. While he is anxious about what he might discover, he also finds he cannot stop the pursuit. Learning about his wife's early life pushes him out of his routine and helps him to begin living his life again. 

My favorite aspect of this book is Phaedra Patrick's ability to push flat characters into dynamic characters. Arthur's children are initially seen as uncaring, preoccupied adult children who occasionally check on their dad out of duty. As the narrative progresses you discover the personal woes the children are facing and you realize that their father's perception of them is not the whole story. Similarly, Arthur's do-gooder neighbor has a son who initially falls into the "goth teen who won't speak" flat character category.  But the reader soon learns about this teen's struggles and why he is how he is. This technique not only challenges us as readers, but also as human beings. We have perceptions about people, but we don't know everything they are going through. Actions we perceive as a slight might in fact be perfectly innocent. There's always more to the story. People are not merely the stereotype they seem to fall so easily into.

This book is filled with hope. There are certainly some very sad scenes that realistically draw a picture of a mourning widower. But life continues as Arthur moves away from his own grief and comes to know so many people in his life better (including his deceased wife). 

The next book I read over Memorial Day weekend was Jenny Colgan's The Bookshop on the Corner.

The first thing I will say about this book is don't skip the "A Message to Readers" section at the beginning of the book. It is a very funny recitation about various places one might read and the pitfalls involved. This is a must read for anyone who identifies reading as one of their hobbies. 

Now onto the story itself. This book follows Nina, who is being laid off from her librarian job. As the library undergoes many changes, she finds herself rescuing unwanted books, but then finds she has no place to put them. She has already filled her home with so many books that her roommate forbids her from bringing in more. After a series of unforeseen events, Nina finds herself living in a Scottish village and running a bookshop out of a truck. If this sounds like your secret dream come true, then you should read this book. It is a charming story. Undoubtedly the book is a light read, but it is a well-written light read. 

The final book I started over Memorial Day weekend (and finished soon thereafter) was Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly.

In recent years, I have had an interest in books following the lives of people in World War II. Lilac Girls falls into that category. The book follows the stories of three women in World War II. Two of the women are real historical figures. Caroline Ferriday was a New York socialite who worked for the French consulate. In Lilac Girls, she finds herself desperately trying to help those most hurt by Hitler. Herta Oberheuser was a German doctor and was the only woman to be tried in the doctor trials at Nuremberg. Kasia is a composite character of the Polish women in concentration camps who were operated upon by Dr. Oberheuser in cruel, experimental surgeries. These women were later brought to the United States by Caroline Ferriday to receive medical assistance the corrected some of what the Nazis had done to them. 

This is an amazing story. Martha Hall Kelly takes on the difficult task of humanizing a Nazi. It is easy to explain the actions of the top Nazis as psychopathic or pure evil. But there were a lot of people who went along with the actions of the Nazis who were neither pure evil nor psychopaths. This book explores some of the reasons that might have happen. 

This book also explores the mental anguish of those who survived the concentration camps. We see some of the characters prior to their arrest, within the concentration camp, and after the war. We see the change in them. They struggle with anger and hate toward the Nazis as well as guilt over surviving when their actions might have placed others who didn't make it at risk. 

I highly recommend Lilac Girls. It's not perfect. Historical fiction is difficult because you don't want to put a phrase in someone's mouth that would not have been a phrase the character would have used in that time period. Lilac Girls is not only historical fiction, but also has characters in Polish culture and German culture. At one point in Lilac Girls a character says her Polish mother would have called the rain "a gully washer." But "gully washer" is a term unique to only certain parts of the United States--not Poland. Little mistakes like this keep the book from being perfect, but it is an excellent book and certainly worth the read. 

In the coming weeks I'll review more of the books I've read this summer. I think we'll also figure out a way to have the Meg and Clare review some of their favorite books of the summer. 

Today is Beatrix Potter's 151st birthday. It has become almost an annual tradition for us to have a tea party on Miss Potter's birthday and today was the perfect day for it. With rain pouring down outside and even a bit of very loud thunder, we baked scones and put out some biscotti and shortbread. Clare--our resident Beatrix Potter expert--insisted on chamomile tea, because that is what Mrs. Rabbit gives Peter after his harrowing adventure in Mr. McGregor's garden.  

You'll notice in the background of this picture a new addition to our dining room--the doll house. As a general rule to preserve my husband's sanity, we don't have toys stored on the main level of our home. Puzzles and games are in cabinets in the family room and can be pulled out when the girls need entertaining. We have converted an entire kitchen pantry closet into a craft and activity closet for the girls. But toys have to be put away upstairs...with a tiny exception. 

Our dining room is a huge room. Once we unpacked our boxes after moving in, I realized that even with a full dining room set, there was still a large amount of unused space. Our dining room has a very old-fashion feel to it with antiques and blue and white china on the wall as well as filling the china cabinet and sideboard. Therefore, I realized, Victorian-era toys would fit in quite well. My rule became if the toys were something with which I might decorate even if I didn't have kids, then they could go into the dining room. At times, a wooden rocking horse makes his home in the dining room (though he also spends a lot of time in our upstairs library). For Christmas, the kids received an electric train set. There is every possibility that the train set was as much for me as it was for them. I love train sets and I happily placed it in the dining room, where our kids and many of their friends enjoy playing with it. 

This past spring, my sister asked me if I wanted our old dollhouse. My grandparents gave it to us when I was probably three. It had traveled with us through our many homes as children and at some point, my sister rescued it from storage and used it for her daughter and then in her classroom. Several years ago, she spruced it up before my girls came for a visit and they enjoyed playing with it at her house. She had previously asked me if I wanted it, but I had to decline because at the time I simply did not have the space. But by this summer, we had the space and if we didn't take, she was going to put it back in storage. I was very happy to take the dollhouse and put it in our dining room.

My sister brought the dollhouse to our mountain vacation. She had it wrapped heavily in plastic for its trip in the back of her family's pickup truck. It sat in front of the mountain house for days before the girls realized what it was. When we unwrapped the dollhouse, we discovered my sister had designed a room for each of the girls. Meg's room had her name on the wall and butterfly wallpaper. Pink bunny wallpaper with a Victorian-style letter monogram made a perfect room for Clare. Anne's room had vintage wallpaper of children playing and, of course, a puppy. My parents and I were amazed how much the girls managed to play with the dollhouse without any furniture or dolls. That being said, they were anxious to fully decorate it. On our trip back home, we found a few dollhouse items at Cracker Barrel and then found these lovely pieces on Amazon (please note my new status as an Amazon Associate--which basically will earn me some money on a gift card if any of my recommendations lead to sale). 

The dollhouse has become a favorite play spot. It is a great place for the girls to play when I am making dinner just a few feet away in the kitchen. Sometimes if I'm reading or blogging in the living room (which is also adjacent to the dining room), Anne will occupy herself at the dollhouse. I placed a nice looking basket just beside the dollhouse to hold any unused furniture or dolls to prevent my husband from complaining about "pieces all over the dining room." The truth is, I very much like the look of dollhouse in the dining room. Though it looks best with one of our sweet girls playing in front of it. 

I am writing this post from a McDonald's playland. We just dropped Meg off at her painting camp at a very cool looking art studio. It is far enough away that I decided to hang around the area with Clare and Anne. We planned to go to a park, but I had to eliminate any park with a sprayground because Meg would throw a fit if we went without her. We stopped by a McDonald's to get Anne some breakfast (she slept late this morning) and realized this McDonald's had a huge playland. So for now, that's where we are. I remember taking my niece to a McDonald's playland about fifteen years ago and seeing a mom working on her laptop while her child played. I thought to myself, "What a great way to entertain your child while also getting your work done." And yet, it has taken me fifteen years to do the same. 

I mentioned in my previous post that we recently went to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. This museum is a favorite spot of ours, so there is nothing new in that. We, however, did go to the museum's Q?rius Science Education Center for the first time. On previous visits, we have spent hours in the museum's discovery room, which has become known as Q?rius Jr, but we have not gone to Q?rius, because it is intended for older kids. That being said, Meg is now eight and quite the science-minded gal. To some extent, she has outgrown Q?rius Jr and needs more of a challenge. Q?rius provided it. 

Upon entering Q?rius, the girls' first challenge was to be archaeologists. They were shown a skull, which they were supposed to have found on a dig. Using other skulls as guides, they had to identify the type of skull it was. A staff member kindly directed them and gave them hints when they needed help

Continuing on their archaeology journey, the girls' next mission was to figure out what tools were used for what purposes by early humans. Again, the girls were given hints when they needed them. Three-year-old Anne even worked on this challenge and answered a few of the questions correctly.

The girls then moved from being archaeologists to being forensic scientists. A microscope hooked up to a screen allowed them to analyze each other's fingerprints. This was one of their favorite activities. 

One of my favorite activities came next. We were asked to trace and identify a mysterious illness. First we had to identify "Patient 0," i.e. the first person who became ill. Next we had to determine how the illness spread and its incubation period. Finally, we had to use all the clues we had gathered to determine what the illness was. It was challenging to Meg and Clare, but within both of their abilities. You could almost see those little brains working and becoming more scientifically fine-tuned. 

The Q?rius room is very well-staffed and the staff is well-trained. There was a person at each station, and the staff member's goal was to guide the girls in finding the right answers, not merely give them the answer (even when the kids were younger than the intended age of the challenge). I believe we only scratched the surface of this amazing learning center. As the girls get older, there will be so many more challenges for them. 

On a recent morning, Meg announced she wanted to go to the Natural History Museum. It was late enough in the morning that I knew parking would be an issue in D.C., so I suggested we try the Children's Science Center Lab. The lab is located at Fair Oaks Mall, where parking is plentiful. Besides, this would be a new spot for us and I wanted to see if the girls enjoyed it.

To be totally honest, I do not have a single picture of this outing, because I inadvertently left my phone in the car. There are excellent pictures of the lab on their website and I would encourage any interested parent to check those out. The lab-like picture inserted here is from our subsequent visit to the Natural History Museum, which I plan to discuss in a later post.

The Children's Science Lab is divided into several rooms or exhibits, though the layout is very open. There are even windows in the dividers between the rooms making it very easy for moms like me to keep an eye on all their children as they explore the various exhibits. 

Meg and Clare began in the Inspiration Hub. The experiment I found most interesting in this room was the robotic arm. A touchscreen allows kids (or parents) to instruct the robotic arm what to do. However, the instructions must be very precise and in the correct order. The touchscreens tell you when you need to refine your instructions and will give you hints as to what is incorrect, but the user must solve the problem. While this process could certainly be frustrating for some kids, it undoubtedly is excellent training for thinking scientifically. Moreover, the long process is made totally worthwhile when that robotic arm finally moves. 

​Anne spent most of her time in the Discovery Room, which is intended for kids under five. The room included giant foam block in so many shapes and forms, a child can build anything in their imagination. Anne loved these blocks. The room also included musical instruments, magnetic blocks and a very fun coral reef aquarium. All three girls spent quite a bit of time trying to spot Dori and Nemo in the aquarium. 

Another favorite room of all three girls was the Tinker Room. On this day, one of the challenges in the room was to build a hover craft. There were a variety of materials the kids could use, such as coffee cup lids, pipe cleaners, paper clips, and the rounded plastic lids that are often used on sundaes. Once a child had built a hover craft, they placed it in an air tunnel to see if it would fly out or actually hover. Meg and Clare were consumed with this project. I have no idea how long they spent creating different models. 

While in the Tinker Room, Anne wandered over to the "make your own kaleidoscope" table. The table provides supplies as well as a few different examples of kaleidoscopes, but there are not set directions. Children are supposed to experiment to see what they can create. As a three-year-old, Anne's creation was less a kaleidoscope and more of a crazy mish mash of tape and glossy paper. A man, who looked like the quintessential science teacher with a full beard and balding head, assured me that children were supposed to explore with the materials and it was fine for Anne to make whatever she wanted to make. She then took this freedom one step farther. She found one of the rounded sundae lids and had me punch two holes on the side. Using yarn, she turned the lid into a doctors mask--just like Doc McStuffins. 

The final room was the Experiment Bar. Here kids can select experiments from a touchscreen and are aided by the staff in completing these experiments. Meg and Clare enjoyed an experiment in which they first hypothesized about the weight of various liquids. They then poured these liquids into a a large test tube to see which sunk to the bottom and which rose to the top. They could then compare their experiment to their original hypothesis. A second experiment they completed at the Experiment Bar required them to make play dough that they would then use to complete an electric circuit. 

The girls were very disappointed when I told them it was time to head home. The Science Center Lab was a huge hit with them. We usually head to Fair Oaks Mall a couple of times a year for haircuts (I could do an entire post praising Cartoon Cuts at this mall for turning Anne's self-imposed haircut into an adorable style). I suspect a trip to the Science Center Lab will now be part of those trips. 

During law school at Emory University, I lived in a basement room of my great-uncle and great-aunt's house. They were both retired university librarians who insisted on remaining close to a university library in their retirement and so, happily for me, they lived within a few miles of Emory. During my last year with them, a problem arose with my aunt's eye quite late at night. She had recently had surgery on that eye and after a lot of deliberation we decided a trip to the emergency room was necessary. I volunteered to drive them since eye problems prevented both of them from driving at night. 

We headed to Emory University Hospital, which was just a few buildings away from where I spent my days at the law school. I can't remember whether I brought law books with me to study, but by the wee hours of the morning, I certainly was not reading them. The hours passed and morning was approaching. At some point I picked up a news magazine sitting in the waiting area and began reading a story about Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. This was 2003 and she was releasing her first novel, The Namesake. I was intrigued by this young writer who had won the Pulitzer Prize for her first published worked and told the unique stories of Bengali immigrants to the United States. But I had my third year of law school to finish, the bar exam to prepare for and a job to find. I wasn't likely to have time to read her work any time soon. My aunt was given the okay to go home and I filed Jhumpa Lahiri's name in my head and drove my aunt and uncle home.

A few months passed and I found myself in a new job in Washington, D.C. To make the transition from Georgia to the D.C. area a little more manageable, I lived with a friend in the exurbs of D.C. My commute was long. Every morning I would drive to a parking garage and take a Fairfax Connector bus to West Falls Church metro station. Then I would ride the metro to Smithsonian, where I would walk a few blocks to my office. At night, I would reverse all of that. This was always intended to be temporary. The only true benefit of such a long commute (other than the reassuring companionship of my dear friend) was that, during the commute, I could read all the books that I had put off reading during law school. On weekends I would explore the shelves of our local (now defunct) Borders Bookstore and buy various books to read. During this time I read Reading Lolita in Tehran. I read Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton (oh yes, I read it before Lin-Manuel Miranda turned it into the Broadway hit it is today). On one of my Borders trips, I bought both Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I read Interpreter of Maladies immediately and loved it. The short stories made for great reading on a commute, but more importantly Lahiri's accessible prose allowed me to see inside a Bengali-American world I would never otherwise be given access.

For some unknown reason, I never read The Namesake. I kept meaning to read it. I took it with me when I finally moved to Arlington, but my shorter commute meant less reading time. I took The Namesake with me when I got married and moved to an even more convenient location (we lived right by the Rosslyn metro--the first stop in Virginia from D.C.). Soon we were moving to a two-bedroom condo to make room for Meg's arrival and I took The Namesake with us. The Namesake survived my book purge when we made room for Clare's arrival and the purge that came before we moved all of our books to a townhouse when we were expecting Anne. Last year, when we made the move to Alexandria and into a substantial house we felt sure we would never outgrow, I again attempted to purge books.  I still hoped I would one day read The Namesake and it made the move with us. 

This past week, I finally read The Namesake. What an extraordinary book. Having just finished all 800-pages of The Goldfinch, I was amazed by Lahiri's ability to tell such a huge story in a mere 300-pages. The story follows Gogol from birth (and even parts of his parents' stories prior to his birth) through his childhood and into adulthood through his early 30s. It is not unexpected that Gogol feels a constant struggle between American culture and Bengali culture and often finds himself alienated from both. What is unexpected is how Lahiri demonstrates this struggle. As a student, Gogol takes comfort in a field trip to a Puritan cemetery where he does headstone rubbings of names as strange and unfamiliar as his own name. But as he starts to get a sense that he can belong in America, his Bengali mother is horrified that a school would visit a cemetery and refuses to allow the headstone rubbings in her kitchen. As he grows older the struggle becomes romance. Can he have a fulfilling relationship with a woman who doesn't understand his family's culture? Is he any more likely to find happiness with a woman who can understand the Bengali culture, but who, like Gogol, has spent her life resisting the traditional ways of that culture? Through all of this, Lahiri also explores the changes of Gogol's parents. Gogol's mother initially hopes to return to India when her husband finishes his schooling. When she finally has the opportunity to return to India, she finds herself to be very much an American citizen. She will never be fully American, but she will never again be fully Bengali. 

​While the immigrant experience is quite unique, I found myself relating to the human experience of constantly pushing against and returning to one's roots. As I dragged this book through the last decade and a half of my life, I wonder how much I have changed in that time. I doubt the person I am today would feel comfortable in the shoes of an Emory law student focused almost entirely on the career I had before me. After my "urbanization," could I ever comfortably return to small town America? Could I live without museums, ballets and musicals at the Kennedy Center, and neighbors who all have advanced degrees (I know that sound snotty, but the conversations really are invigorating)? That being said, as a stay-at-home-mom, do I fit into this world? Generally no, but I have found my group of well-educated moms who stay home with their kids. Perhaps we all discover that we don't fit into the world generally, but we'll find our way and our group. And the truth is, we'll always be changing, so don't assume the people most like you will make you the most happy.

For those of you who weren't looking for a book club recitation, here's a totally unrelated picture of the girls and Nana on the Appalachian Trail. Enjoy.

We love listening to audio books. We have listened to so many, but some of our favorites include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, any of the books in the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright and Liz Kessler's Philippa Fisher books. During our last car trip, we revisited The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall.

I read the first three books in the Penderwicks series when my sister gave the books to me as a birthday gift a few years ago.  My initial reaction to these books is here. Suffice it to say, I loved the books from the beginning and was anxious for my girls to get old enough to read them. When the fourth book in the series (The Penderwicks in Spring) came out in 2015, I immediately bought the book. I cried. I laughed. I loved it. 

My children became interested in the books because they saw me reading them so much. We read the first book in the Penderwicks series a couple of years ago. They enjoyed the book, but we did not moved forward in the series because both Meg and Clare were very sensitive about death at that point and the second book in the series discusses the death of the Penderwicks' mother in much more detail. I thought it would be too much for them. With the passing of time, the girls no longer remembered much about the first book.

The day before we left for the mountains, we went to the library and picked out several audio books for the trip. The first two Penderwicks books were among those we chose. We didn't start with these books. We re-listened to a Liz Kessler book on our drive to the mountain house. We tried to start an A to Z mystery book, but we were having trouble with the CD skipping. I eventually put in The Penderwicks and the girls were all hooked. 

Anne--our three-year-old, who is at times resistant to audio books--loved Batty, the youngest Penderwick. Batty loves all animals and is especially close to the family dog, Hound. While we do not have a family dog, Anne loves all animals and is especially close to every dog in our neighborhood. She regularly goes to our neighbors' house just to snuggle with their eighteen-year-old dachshund, who is very patient with Anne (or simply too old to move). Anne may not have understood everything going on in the book, but she understood Batty's love of animals and she understood that the big sisters were looking out for Batty. That is Anne's world as well.

There was so much about The Penderwicks that both Meg and Clare loved. The book constantly references other classic children's books which we have read as a family. The Penderwick girls have read many of our family's favorite books, including the Narnia series and A Little Princess.  Meg and Clare caught every reference and reacted with great excitement. 

The relationship between Skye and Jane, the two middle sisters, is very similar to Meg and Clare. Skye loves science and mathematics (not unlike Meg). Jane is a writer, who is constantly writing her Sabrina Starr stories (very much like Clare). Skye and Jane are very close in age (like Meg and Clare) and experience the trials of sharing a room and the joys of having space to themselves. Their closeness in age also means Jane and Skye are on the same soccer team and often together at school. That certainly rings true for Meg and Clare. 

Clare has certainly been inspired by Jane's writing. We moved on to the second book in the series (by this point, I felt the girls were better prepared to handle it), The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. In this book, Jane writes a play about Aztecs. It is actually Skye's homework assignment, but Jane writes the play and Skye does Jane's non-fiction writing assignment. (For parents concerned about teaching morals, don't worry. Penderwick honor wins out in the end and the girls do the right thing.) Clare has taken to writing her own play about sisters and is trying to persuade her sisters to act out the parts. 

I'm so happy that this series of books is resonating with my children. I think we'll keep moving along in the series. I can't wait for the fifth (and final) Penderwicks book to be released. 

Many times in the past 14 years I have driven on I-81 through southwestern Virginia and have seen signs to Grayson Highlands State Park, Hungry Mother State Park and Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. On these drives, I hurried passed, being anxious to reach my parents' home in Georgia or my home in the Washington, D.C. area. Our recent getaway to the mountains provided our family with our first chance to explore these wonderful sites. 

I suspect our visit to Grayson Highlands State Park will remain a memory my children will take with them into adulthood. We went to this state park on the Fourth of July. Online I had found a letterbox clue for a box located on the Rhododendron Trail in the park. ​When we arrived at the trail, we were a little surprised by how steep it was. Also, based on the description of the trail posted at its beginning, it seemed that the letterbox was likely located several miles from the start of the trail. Even with these drawbacks, we started on the trail because we were there and it was something to do. 

As we walked up the steep path, I mentioned that there were wild ponies in the park and the girls should keep a lookout for them. Because it was the Fourth of July, there were lots of people on the trail and one kindly woman told us there were ponies if we continued on the path. Our entire group hiked until the Rhododendron Trail crossed the Appalachian Trail. At that point, my parents and Anne took a rest while Meg, Clare and I continued up the steep path. Meg had her heart set on seeing the ponies and Clare wasn't about to let Meg see the ponies without her. At one point in our journey we had spotted ponies on a far off hill--so far that we could barely make out they were ponies. As we continued, we kept thinking we would come to that hillside. Just as we were giving up and looking to one side of the path believing the ponies we had seen were in that direction, a fellow hiker told us to look to our left. Up a slight rise, a large group of wild ponies (including several babies) ate and slept. While these ponies were wild, they were used to being around people in the park and we were able to walk right up to them (though many signs posted in the park warned against touching or feeding the ponies). 

There are few things that leave my children truly speechless (especially Meg), but this experience did precisely that. They were amazed by these creatures and at first were timid about getting too close. I appreciated their caution, but encouraged them to get closer so they could truly observe the ponies. 

Meg and Clare were most excited about the foals. These precious babies rested in the grass or nursed from their mamas. Somehow they simultaneously appeared both fragile and unbelievably well equipped to handle the difficult terrain. One foal remained so still in the grass that several of our fellow hikers moved closer to it in an attempt to get him to move. "Is he dead?" Meg asked. "He's breathing," I assured her. Soon the little foal was up and moving around with the other ponies. 

As we walked around the ponies, both Meg and I spotted a large gate in the distance that seemed to meet the description in our letterbox clue. We so wanted to keep climbing up the path to see if we had found the spot where the box was hidden, but poor Clare had needed a restroom break for a very long time. Meg and I knew we couldn't ask her to go any farther. Happily, the trip back down the Rhododendrum Trail was much faster than the hike up. While Clare concentrated on finding the closest restroom, Meg declared, "I'm going to be a ranger when I grow up. The type of ranger that rides horses and takes care of animals." A passing hiker walking his dog responded, "That sounds like a great plan." A little while later, Meg simply said, "This is the best day of my life." 

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents decided to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Happily, they invited us to join them. They rented a house in Grayson County, Virginia, which is almost the halfway point between our house and theirs. 

A few days before we left, Meg asked if we could take Skyline Drive when we drove to meet my parents. In her social studies class this past year, one unit was on the National Park Service, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary. One of the parks they discussed was the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive is the road that runs the length of that park. We knew that taking Skyline Drive would undoubtedly add time to our trip (probably a couple of hours), but how could we say no. Meg loves social studies. We couldn't take her to Canada and Mexico (the other places they studied this year), but we could take her to Shenandoah National Park. 

Skyline Drive is a particularly popular destination when the leaves are changing color in fall. We did not get to experience this autumnal delight, but we did see some breathtaking mountain views. Skyline Drive is also known for it wildlife. Some people are lucky enough to spot a black bear. We saw no bears (and, quite honestly, I'm not sure how the girls would have responded had we seen a bear--so that is probably for the best). We, however, did see a beautiful deer on the side of the road just as we were pulling onto Skyline Drive. As everyone excitedly pointed out the deer, my husband and I both breathed a sigh of relief when we heard Clare say from the back of the minivan, "I saw the deer too." Clare is often in her own world and misses these little pieces of nature. When everyone else gets excited and she realizes she has missed something, the tears inevitably start. Not this time. She was paying attention and saw the deer herself. Hooray!

Skyline Drive is undoubtedly beautiful, but after awhile we were ready to get back on the interstate and get to the house. We exited Shenandoah National Park at the road leading to Harrisonburg. We stopped at Costco in Harrisonburg and picked up the last of our supplies for our mountain trip.

It was late by the time we reached Marion, Virginia, and began heading down a winding road that led to the rented house. The roads became gravel at some point. Our phone suddenly had no service. We were cut off from the world. I'm happy to report we did find the house (thanks, in part, to my parents' red car which is easy to spot) and we were welcomed to this fantastically remote spot by my parents and my sister's family. More on our adventures tomorrow.