Shenandoah, Day 2

We had Alison's new favorite breakfast: english muffin, egg and sausage sandwich.

Then we went fishing!

Alison explored nature while she waited her turn.

We bought the boys these scopes to explore with...I think Eli is exploring his hand here, but they had fun with them.

 

Ben was changing lures and crouched down at the tackle box, when Colin went over and just snuggled up to him.

The boys and I headed up to the cabin (the stairs were SO steep):

and Alison got some alone fishing time with daddy.

She caught her first fish!!!

  

She loved holding the fish, which is really surprising and was really excited for me to post this picture of her.

Here's the cabin:

and Colin throwing rocks off the deck into the river.

Then we went to Luray Caverns.

Our patience was tested on this one, but I think it was worth it.  It was long wait to get in and then we got stuck in an hour tour.  Ben and I are not tour guide people; exponentially not with kids.  The guide actually was good and the caves were awesome, but I was very nervous about some of the people down in that cave with us...and they were not our children.  Let's just say, if you can barely walk or breath, please don't go in a cave!

Pictures were hard to take down there and nothing came out quite right (I guess I needed Kent there), but this was my favorite spot.  It was a shallow pond, but the reflection made it seem really deep.

We made it out

We spent the rest of the day relaxing at our cabin.  We played some rounds of Mastermind and grilled dinner.  Apparently Ben smokes a pipe now...

Colin was quick to tell him that it smelled icky.

I got these "monkey drinks" (that's what the kids call them) as treats.

They didn't last long...

The kids were excited just to play and watch new kids shows in the cabin,

but eventually joined us outside for a little exploring.  Eli is teaching Colin the art of finding weapons in the sticks.  They were so proud of themselves for hiking up the mountain around our cabin.

 

 Alison took some pictures and she captured the boys perfectly; Eli is still in pretend world with his stick weapon and Colin is making some goofy face.

He's always making a face.

Sleeping was a little rocky the first night, with a wet bed and bloody nose in the middle of the night, on top of taking forever to get everyone asleep.  So this night, we decided to put the boys to bed first and let Alison stay up a little bit later until they fell asleep.  I took my turn at watching cable TV and I looked over to this:

She's curled up on the couch with her Nature Encyclopedia book.  It melts me.  She loves that book and made a huge point to take it on this trip with us.  I love how much she loves reading.