Hanging out in Alabama Waiting for the Twins to be Born

Before I get started telling about my visit to Alabama to help Tyler and Rachel when their twins were born, I thought I'd put in this selfie I took as I was watching the total solar eclipse on August 21st. There was lots of hype about the "Great American Eclipse", since the path of the eclipse went across the entire country, but I didn't plan ahead and get eclipse glasses until the last minute. In Virginia the sun was only covered 73%, but it was still really awesome to watch from our back porch.

On August 26th I flew to Alabama in anticipation of the birth of Tyler and Rachel's twins. To be honest, I booked the flight two months earlier and thought they would have already been born by that day. But they weren't, so I figured I could at least help out Rachel in the last few days before the twins were born.

 I took this picture at church, because I thought it was a sweet moment between Andrew and his mommy before their world was changed by the addition of two new siblings.

 This was Sunday after church as I was reading books to Sylvia and Andrew.

The base pool was open in the evenings, so Tyler and I took the big kids over a couple of times to swim.

We had fun building towers with the Lincoln logs.

Daddy with his kids. Andrew decided he didn't want to have his picture taken.

Bonding with Grandma time.

Sylvia playing in the sand on the sidewalk as we waited for Andrew's bus to come.

Andrew goes to preschool everyday from 8:30am to 1pm. In the morning his daddy drops Andrew off at school on his way to work, but Andrew rides the school bus to come home.

It was rainy a couple of the days we were walking home from the bus stop, so I let the kids use my umbrella. They really liked using the umbrella, and they didn't have ones just for them, so I found some on line and ordered cute kid umbrellas for them.

While I was visiting Andrew had an open house for his school. We got to see his classroom and meet one of his new friends.

This lion is outside the entrance to the school, and Andrew and Sylvia were very impressed with it! I think it's a water fountain.

Sylvia trying out the twins baby stroller.

I actually took these pictures of Sylvia and Andrew at the park while Daddy was visiting Mommy and the twins in the hospital after they were born.

I'm glad I was able to spend so much time with Tyler and Rachel's family, even if I was only there for three days after the twins were born!

Delaware and Pennsylvania Trip

Kent and I took an overnight Friday-Saturday trip to Delaware and Pennsylvania in the middle of August.

It's only about a three hour drive, so our first stop was the DuPont mansion called Winterthur, in Delaware.

It's situated on many acres of property, so a shuttle carried us from the entrance to the house, telling us lots of interesting facts.

 This is the house seen from the back. It's one of the largest houses in America, so this is just a small corner.

 One of the DuPont owners had loved to collect American history art, and had a couple of nice portraits of George Washington.

 This was one of the formal dining rooms.

  The room decorated in Oriental style had this lovely grand piano.

 This unique piano was in a different room. (I always like to look at the different styles of pianos)

After checking into our hotel, we next went to Longwood Gardens, which is in Pennsylvania.We'd come at Christmas time a couple of years ago and promised ourselves we'd be back to see it in the summer.

 When we visited in 2015 these fountain gardens had been under construction,

 so we were excited to see them. Every hour they had a short water show with the fountains dancing, swirling and shooting high into the air.

This was a smaller fountain garden in a different part of the park.

 We were expecting to see more flowers in blossom than we saw.

 Here are some of the ones we found, but mostly things were green.

 The highlight of the trip was later in the evening after it got dark. The fountains put on a longer show, dancing with light and to music.

 On the night we were there the program was entitled "British Invasion".

 All the music that was played were pop songs from British musicians.

 It was amazing to behold and we loved it! The show lasted about half an hour.

I was actually able to upload a short video. I usually don't have much luck doing that on Blogger, so you can get a better idea of what I'm describing.

After the fountain/light show, we walked around a bit more of the park. The lily pads pictured above made me think of something out of a Dr. Seuss book!

 On Saturday morning the first thing we did was to visit a Pennsylvania state park commemorating the Battle of Brandywine during the Revolutionary war.

 Here's Kent standing with soldiers wearing uniforms from the American and British soldiers.

 The building above was reconstructed because it was used as Washington's headquarters during the battle.

 This room was set up to look as it did when George Washington used it as his office.

After touring the Brandywine Park, we went back to Winterthur to spend time in the "Enchanted Woods" on the grounds, since we didn't have time to do it the day before.

 This was a stone cottage with a thatched roof used as a play house, I think.

It had many cute details.

Here's a view of the inside.

 It reminded us of an old style British cottage.

This little house in a tree trunk was another fun place. You can see the little chairs inside it.

These mushrooms were a fairy circle, and if you stepped inside it, mist would come out of the mushrooms.

There was a little alcove for a tea party.

 And there was the giant-sized bird's nest.

We wanted to sit inside it to show how big it is. Yes, we're sitting on eggs!

On our way home we stopped in a the city of New Castle, Delaware. One of it's claims to fame is that it was the first landing place of William Penn.

 We saw this church, another of the original churches in the early days of British colonization.

The church has been operating continuously since 1689. Also in New Castle near this church is the "First State" national historical park. We walked around the area but never did see an official sign designating the park. As usual, we had an enjoyable and educational couple of days going back and forth between Delaware and Pennsylvania!