Last week I was having so much fun, I practically forgot it was Monday.
Aunt Shelly, Joseph, and I had planned previously to go bike riding in the morning. I was particularly excited about showing Joseph how much fun it is to ride a bike that actually has gears and brakes in a place that actually has a long bike path, a river, trees, and deer to look at. Somewhere between getting up and getting out the door, it was mentioned that Daniel would like to come with us, but he was being kind of slow, so Joseph and I decided to start walking for Aunt Shelly’s house without him. We made it all the way to the street when he came tearing out of the house and ran about half-way down the driveway, then TOTALLY wiped out.
Result?
A broken watch, a couple of long tough-guy looking scrapes and cuts on his arms and side, and a decision to forgo the bike ride. Joseph and I kind of just gaped, and then shrugged and went on with the plans.
It was a fantastic bike ride. We took the same route as on Saturday, but the path was even less crowded, and the weather was cooler, and I was riding Becky’s bike, which has a much comfy-er seat! Joseph had confessed to being most worried about going downhill, but we never encountered anything too steep, and he enjoyed passing us on every uphill stretch just as we enjoyed passing him on every downhill.
After the ride, I washed up and ate breakfast – delicious as usual – and then Grandpa, Aunt Susie, the Family of Floofs, Daniel, Andy, and I loaded up to go to the Hermitage (home of Andrew Jackson). It reminded me of the Carnton plantation we visited with Grandpa previously, but it was quite a bit fancier and more prestigious (oh yeah, and more expensive). We watched an introductory film about Andrew Jackson, and then got headphones that played commentary about things when we pressed certain buttons (and nothing when one of us, namely Edward, pressed random buttons and tried in vain to hurl it to the floor). There was a museum, but it was small and unimpressive, apart from these wax figures of Jackson and his wife, and their actual, real, live, honest-to-goodness chariot:
We went walking outside to see the actual house and get a tour (though you couldn’t take pictures of the inside). The house actually seemed rather small to me, smaller than the Farm (another southern house, currently owned by my mom’s younger brother in Johnson City Tennessee) and felt very vertically angled. The paintings in the walls were tall and placed high up on the walls. The walls, by the way, were ridiculous. Some were painted to look like stone and marble (and ended up looking totally cheesy, like a reject from a film set), and there were paintings of Greek stories (Telemachus on the isle of Calypso, I think!?!???) in the main halls. I liked the curvy staircase, and the fake food in the main dining hall, and those big tall beds with fancy curtains that make you think of Ebenezer Scrooge’s bed. One of the rooms was basically used by Sam Houston whenever he wanted it, whether Jackson was there or not.
After seeing the house (Eddie didn’t make it past the main hall, unfortunately), we checked out the slave quarters and the smokehouse and what looked like it might be the dinner bell. Everything had a very Southerny feel to it, which was nice.
We spent quite a bit of time walking in the garden (Rachel’s garden) and trying to avoid getting stung by sweat bees. Grandpa, myself, and Eddie all got stung at least once, but Eddie at least got kissed about twenty times to make up for it. In the meantime, we listened or pretended to listen to our audio tours and rolled our eyes when the tour guy suggested that we pretend to be slaves working in the garden on a hot day so we could concentrate on what it was *really* like back then. Yeah right, like the old ladies in costumes would even allow us to go digging in the garden wearing our headphones.
We left the Hermitage a little before 1 pm, arriving home for a scrumptious lunch – ham and cheese sandwiches with grapes and peaches! I love Grandma!
I took a nap after lunch, and had an odd dream of Grandpa waking me to go swimming. Since I believe in dreams coming true, I decided to get up and go. While getting ready, I was upset to discover that I had left my goggles at the fitness center. It’s very unusual for me to misplace things like that, and I was in denial up until the point when I actually got them back again. The teenage lifeguard actually wasn’t very helpful; she showed me a couple of pairs in a storage closet (none of them were mine), but I had noticed a bunch of goggles sitting out on a box next to the pool, and when I went to check it out on my own, voila! There they were. She didn’t even put the other pairs with the ones in the storage closet. Oh well.
Joseph went swimming with me, and we both did laps (alas, the pool was divided in short lanes for the rest of our stay… though on the bright side, we did each have our own lane) until we got tired. I tried to substitute 3 short laps for 1 long one, but may have lost count. Anyway, we stayed a bit longer than last time, and Grandpa got a considerable amount of work done on his Sudoku and crossword puzzle.
After showering at home, we all went over to Aunt Shelly’s for an amazing dinner – Grandma’s zucchini bread squares (looooooved these!), stuffed peppers (I’d never had them before, but they were very good!), chips and a corn/bean-like dip (always good), watermelon, and sticky chocolate chip cookie bars for dessert. Uncle Bill’s mom also came for dinner and it was fun having another person to chat with around the table.
The “young people,” as they say in Mandy, went outside right after dinner to play badminton. Julie, Andy, and I played against Becky and Daniel, though none of us was very good. We broke two shuttlecocks, got a lot of bug bites, and still had fun. Baffling, isn’t it?
It was Joseph, Kirsti, and Edward’s last night, which was tragic, so they went around telling everyone goodnight. Edward let me hold him for a few seconds and didn’t even cry – a miracle!
Here are the monkeys from the zoo... oh wait, that's the next picture. Hmmm... I was positive....
I have a movie that shows how NOISY these guys were, but Blogger isn't letting me load it up. Sorry.
Fancy signage!
The little-known spraying plastic turtle.
Hmmm...Ruth and a carousel... does this look familiar?
Apparently there's something about elephants that guys find fascinating...
Ha ha! There isn't really an elephant in this direction! Made you look!
And here's "The Elephant Man."
Were there really two giraffes?
We went inside this bird place where you could buy birdseed and attempt to coax birds to come land (and potentially poop) on you. We all passed on the buying birdseed bit, but Andy still tried the coaxing.
A creative fountain.
A one-horned farm goat.
Andy in the cool garden by the farm.
Never did figure out what this animal was...
The jungle gym. It really was as big as it looks.
Don't feed the snakes, now.
Sillies.
A trap they use for catching Andys.
If you are sinking in quicksand, climb on a crocodile.
The peephole where we watched the meerkats.
Squint and maybe you can see the tigers back there.
Andy looked a crocodile in the eye and lived to tell the tale!
Feed the fish....tuppence a bag?
Bats. Not in the belfry. It was actually a lot darker here than it looks in the picture.
Finally, three pairs of feet. Guess which two belong to the weirdos: