by Judy Handley | Jul 30, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 282, Year 9: Happy, Happy Birthday to Coco
Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Weather: Mostly Sunny
Location: Back Home on Windbird in Quissett Harbor, Massachusetts
We’re back home on Windbird and are sending happy, happy birthday wishes to Coco. She turned two today and had a wonderful birthday party back at the pirate camp in Puerto Rico. We talked to her on the phone this evening. At first she was just very quiet, but then she started talking and talking and talking, telling us everything about her birthday.
The other two year-old in our lives, Mr. Oliver, didn’t have a birthday today, but he did talk all the way from Williamsburg to Cape Cod. He was talking to entertain himself on the 13.5 hour drive home. It was long, but all three boys had a good day. We left Williamsburg at 6:15 this morning and arrived at Heather and Jed’s at 7:45 this evening. We are all exhausted, but we had such a wonderful time together with family in Williamsburg that it makes it all worth it. Tomorrow life goes back to normal, but we’ll move forward with wonderful memories of a fantastic family reunion.
by Judy Handley | Jul 29, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 281, Year 9: Last Day of Martin Family Reunion
Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Weather: Beautiful Day, Windy and Cooler
Location: King’s Creek Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia
Today was the last day of the 2014 Martin Family Reunion. The Handley-Goldstone’s made a decision to stay close to the ‘home’ today, which meant not going to Norfolk to tour the Navy base. Sam and Jonah really wanted to see the Navy ships, but they wanted to play mini-golf and frolic in the pool more. We had planned to see our sailing friends Chris and Geoff of Shambala in Norfolk, but when we told them we weren’t coming there, they decided to come spend the afternoon here with us. We really enjoyed their visit.
Heather, Jed, and boys spent the morning playing mini-golf while most of the female contingency did a little outlet shopping. A few of us stayed behind and just enjoyed a relaxed morning. Most everyone spent the afternoon at the pool and then we gathered for the ‘last supper’ together. Tomorrow morning some of us will head north and some will head south. The time together has passed so quickly. If we survive the long trip home tomorrow with three little boys that would rather do anything but sit in a van, maybe we can start planning the next family gathering.
by Judy Handley | Jul 28, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 280, Year 9: Jamestown, Farewell to JJZ&C, Family Picnic Dinner
Date: Monday, July 28, 2014
Weather: Sunny Day, Blue Sky with Puffy White Clouds
Location: King’s Creek Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia
It was another day full of family fun—a visit to the Jamestown Settlement, a little time in the pool, a late afternoon farewell to Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco, and an evening picnic dinner here at King’s Creek. Justin, Jo, and kids took a 5 pm bus to Richmond and a train from there to Washington, DC. They will fly out of National in the morning (Tuesday) and get back to the pirate camp tomorrow evening. Wednesday is Coco’s birthday and they really wanted to be home for that event, so they needed to leave here today. Tomorrow my nephews Tommy and Todd and their family will head home as well as my nephew Barry. The rest of us will be leaving early on Wednesday morning. I think those of us that are staying here tomorrow are planning a laid back day here at King’s Creek. The pool is fantastic for kids and they can play there for hours. There is a very shallow kiddie pool and then the larger pool is divided into three sections that flow from one to the next. The shallow pool is 2 feet deep and perfect for the two and three year olds, the middle pool is 3 feet deep and perfect for the other children, and then there is the 4-foot deep pool where adults and some kids hang out. You can actually ‘flow’ from one pool to the other with the water. And then there’s a hot tub for adults. So it is easy to spend hours there just enjoying life.
It is a family tradition to have a golf outing when we are all together, so the golfers took off to make a 10 am tee-time. Last night Jed found out that there was an open space, so he decided to join in.
Mark and I took Heather, Justin, Jo, and the grandkids to Jamestown, along with my sister Patsy and two of my nieces, Lynn and Candi. We went to Jamestown Settlement which is museum with inside and outside venues. Outside there is a Powhatan Indian Village, a Riverfront Discovery Area featuring re-creations of the three ships that sailed from England to Virginia in 1607, and James Fort which represents life as it was here in the early days of the settlement (1610-1614). There are guides dressed in period costumes, so we spent all of our time outside. With five children under the age of 7, including two 2 year-olds, we decided that touring the inside galleries would just be too much. But by staying outside and stopping for a mid-tour ice cream break, we all had a great time. We had to go in two cars and when we left, I took Justin and Jo on a quick shopping spree. Somehow Justin lost his shoes here and Ziggy’s crocs were rubbing a raw place on the side of his foot, so new shoes were a necessity for the trip home. And Jo wanted to buy a few things at Trader Joe’s to take home. Puerto Rico is wonderful in many ways, but with Ziggy and Jo’s gluten-free, dairy-free diets, buying food is a challenge. Trader Joe’s has great goat cheese and Jo wanted to stock up. By the time we got back King’s Creek, there was less than an hour for them to pack and for Ziggy and Coco to have one more fun time with little cousins at the pool. And we still made it to the bus station about ten minutes early. But Ziggy, Coco, and I were dripping wet when we got into the van. We had towels and Justin and Jo dressed the kids on the way. I was a little more than embarrassed to get out of the van in downtown Williamsburg in a bathing suit with a short cover-up. I was in such a hurry that I forgot my pants! Oh well, not a pretty sight, but at least I got to be there for the final farewells. William Shakespeare said it best in Romeo and Juliet, “Parting is such sweet sorrow”.
We ended the day with a barbeque picnic dinner. There are grills right outside the townhouses, so we stationed Mark at one grill doing hamburgers and my nephew Tommy at another grill doing hot dogs and sausages. We still had a ton of Costco potato salad left over from our salmon cake dinner on Saturday night, so we added that to the menu. We have been able to provide dinner for this crowd of nearly 40 people every night at a very reasonable cost and with a minimum of cooking time thanks to Costco. After dinner we said our farewells to nephew Todd and his family as they will be leaving at 4 am. I just can’t believe how quickly the time has flown by.
by Judy Handley | Jul 27, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 279, Year 9: It’s a . . . Family Tradition
Date: Sunday, July 27, 2014
Weather: Intermittent Rain Showers, Clearing Late Afternoon
Location: King’s Creek Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia
We had heavy rain overnight, but by the time we all got up, the rain lightened to intermittent rain showers. The weather forecast was for more rain mid-day, but we took advantage of the lull and carried on with our outdoor plans in the hopes that the weather would clear. It did, not until late afternoon, but in the meantime some of us toured Williamsburg and others went to Jamestown, and then we all returned to King’s Creek for a late afternoon swim. We then gathered for dinner and ended the evening with a walk down memory lane via old home videos. We watched the ‘cousins’ playing golf with their Uncle Joe and Uncle Dickie and then singing ‘our’ song at a family gathering in 1994. Years ago my nephew Tommy rewrote the words of the country song, Family Tradition, to match our family, so we adopted it as our family anthem. We then ended the day by continuing to party hearty into the wee hours of the morning . . . one of those family traditions.
by Judy Handley | Jul 26, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 278, Year 9: Family Fun
Date: Saturday, July 26, 2014
Weather: Another Beautiful Day with a Late PM Thunderstorm
Location: King’s Creek Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia
King’s Creek Plantation is proving to be a perfect place for our Martin family gathering and we are having some serious family fun. My sister Patsy and her husband Joe, plus Mark and I, make up the base of the layer cake. The next layer consists of the ‘cousins’—my children and the children of my brothers and sisters—and their families. This layer would be the grandchildren of my mother Ollie and my dad Hayes. Then comes layer number three—my children’s children and the children of all of the cousins—the great grandchildren of Ollie and Hayes. And finally the topping on the layer cake are Kit (age 3) and Emma (7 months old), the first of the great-great grandchildren of Ollie and Hayes. There are 38 of us here with 14 under the age of 18. Today was a day of frolicking in the pool, taking a break and then going back to the pool, playing a great game of baseball, having a salmon cake dinner (a family tradition), and then having a belated birthday celebration for the first of the cousins to reach the ripe old age of 60. Tomorrow will be another day of family fun. Everyone is relaxing and having a great time. There are so many wonderful historical things we could all be doing, but the main thing on everyone’s mind is to just hang out together. So we shall see what tomorrow brings.
by Judy Handley | Jul 25, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 277, Year 9: Delmarva to Williamsburg
Date: Friday, July 25, 2014
Weather: Beautiful Day
Location: King’s Creek Plantation, Williamsburg, Virginia
It was a long day in the car, but with a nostalgic run through Salisbury, Maryland, a fun stop at Assateague National Seashore, and not-so-much-fun, but necessary stop at Costco in Norfolk to buy a van load of food, we made it to King’s Creek Plantation around 7:30 pm. We spent the evening getting settled in the town house and visiting with family and it is now 1:45 am. It’s too late to spend time writing a full log so I’ll just hit the highlights—breakfast at the Hampton Inn, a drive through the neighborhood where we lived in the 1980’s, lunch on the beach at Assateague and a look at wild ponies on our drive out of the park, a longer than expected drive from Assateague to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a drive across the Chesapeake, grocery stop at Costco, driving through Friday evening traffic, arrival at King’s Creek in Williamsburg, Justin and Jo’s arrival by train from Washington, DC after arrival by plane from Puerto Rico, and a very late night reunion with family that included lots of laughter.
My niece Janet that arranged this family reunion had t-shirts printed for all the staff of Camp Oma. Lots of fun to come!
