Another Great Weekend in Richmond

Three day weekends are great, especially when you live close enough to family to be able to visit over the holiday. For our Memorial Day weekend, Heather and I went to Richmond to visit Alyson, Nate, and the little munchkins.

We had a great time. We went to Monticello for one day (see our other blog entry below), Deep Run Park another, and then for our last day, we went to May Mount (sp?) Park and had a BBQ (with some excellent home-made ice cream. Thanks again, Sarena and Adam for the Christmas gift. We love home-made ice cream!).

Other than that, we swam a little in the pool, which was still pretty cold, played a little Mario Kart on the Wii, and played some games. Oh, I almost forgot, we also pretended to be pirates for a little while with Treyton. I can’t wait for him and Jake to get together this summer and be pirate buddies!

The pictures below tell most of the story for the weekend, but I did want to mention one quick thing. May Mount Park is part zoo, part gardens, part historical buildings, and part park. One of the animals that were on display there was two black bears. Normally at other zoos, one is lucky even to see the bears at all. These two black bears, however, were totally active, running all over their grounds, wrestling with each other, and playing in the pond. It was really fascinating to watch them up close being so active. At times, they wandered really close to the where we were, being only 10 or 15 feet away. It was really pretty cool.

Here's one of the active black bears.


The Italian rose garden


The Japanese garden (w/waterfall, which Trey loved, and Nate too!)






This tree branch is actually about 5 feet off the ground, which made Heather really nervous to stand on it, but...


Treyton was pretty excited to sit on it with Nate. We didn't get a good shot of it, but Trey even practiced his Tarzan call on this tree branch. It was pretty cute.


Heather and I had a rare moment when Trey cuddled up with us on the bamboo seat (not moving for at least a good 30 minutes; unheard of for that little ball of energy). We took turns telling kid jokes and busting up laughing together. It was pretty fun.


Here's a great shot of Jayci's new face. She does this all time; adorable, isn't it!