We Witnessed History in the Making--Germany, 1989

We were living in Germany when the Berlin wall came down. The first time I went through Checkpoint Charlie to go from West Berlin to East Berlin in 1985 was one of the most exciting things I'd done in my life to that point.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that less than five years later the "Iron Curtain" would come down. Side note: You know you're grooving on my 1990's fashion sense!

We weren't in Berlin on November 9, 1989, but we took the kids on the train a few months later so they could have the chance to chip away at the Berlin Wall.

Kent and I had gone to Berlin in January without the kids, but came home and immediately made plans to return with the children.

Lissa--age seven

Garrett--age 6

Tyler--age 3

Adrianne--age 20 months

We've had some chunks of the wall all these years, and just recently Kent created a shadowbox display for them. I can't believe it's been 20 years already! Thank you Pres. Reagan, for bringing about the fall of communism.

Kent-boy Visits Walton's Mountain

Last weekend I met Kent at work and we drove over to the Shenandoah mountains. We wanted to spend the night so we could get an early start on Saturday to see the fall colors. We had to contend with DC traffic getting out of the city, so it took us over four hours to get to the Residence Inn we were staying at in the town of Waynesboro, which is right at the entrance to Shenandoah National Park. We woke up on Saturday to a very overcast and rainy day, but we put on our raincoats and headed out. In the mountains there were rainy patches, but the sun did occasionally peek out.

Skyline Drive was built during the Depression as one of FDR's civilian work corps projects. It's built along the top ridge of the mountains, with a scenic viewpoint stop almost every mile.

You may notice in many of these pictures the stone wall built along the side of the road. You don't see those very many places in the U.S.!

Unfortunately, our camera didn't do a very good job of capturing the vividness of the fall colors.

We'd planned to do some hiking in the national forest, but didn't because of the rain.

One reason I chose to stay in Waynesboro was because it was close to the small town which was the inspiration for the 70's tv series, "The Waltons". Some of you may remember that Kent went through a phase while we were living in Germany where he was watching the DVD's of "The Waltons". Let's see, I think it was after his "Bonanza" phase and before his "Daniel Boone" phase.

When we moved to Virginia and found out there was a "Walton's Mountain" Museum, we knew we'd have to go there one day. We had to drive on some small, winding, and even a dirt road to get to the itty-bitty town, but we got there. Surprisingly enough, there were about 20-30 other people in the little museum that rainy Saturday afternoon.
The museum had some replicas of some of the sets from the TV show, and lots of memorabilia, like lunchboxes, paper dolls, games and books from the 70's. It was interesting, and we learned lots about the man who wrote the book the series was based on, and about the actors who played the different characters. All in all we had a nice weekend, with maybe more driving than we'd wanted to, because of the rain. We were home by dinner time on Saturday.

In the spirit of the TV series, I'd like to end this blog post by saying, "Good night, Kent-boy."