Don't worry

Based on the time lag between my last post when I said I was going away for the weekend and this one where I tell you how the weekend was, you may think that we got lost or kidnapped down in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

No need to worry, we're fine.
Great, even.

Our weekend was a wonderfully relaxing time of enjoying the view, the fire place, the gas grill and all the gourmet food we packed along, the big jacuzzi tub, and most of all, great conversation and quality time with each other.

We listened to Gary Chapman's book on CD The Seasons of Marriage. He's the same author that wrote The Five Love Languages. It is a great book and we highly recommend it. I love that we listen to those types of books on the way down, because it makes most of our conversations deep and meaningful. It was especially enlightening to talk about the last 5 (wonderful) years of our marriage- what we did well and what we didn't and what we want to improve upon for the next five.

On Sunday it stormed off and on and was rather cool outside (a lovely refreshing 60 degrees, versus 90+ in DC!), so we kept a fire burning all day and enjoyed many games of Skip-Bo and Rummikub in front of the fire. It was just so great to just not do anything.

We were sad to come home on Monday but excited because Joel's sister Chelsea was arriving from Hawaii on Tuesday to stay with us for almost a month. She's visited us previously for this long when we lived in Texas and we were looking forward to spending some quality time together.

Fast forward 2 weeks...

She's been here about a week now and this trip has been really fun. Besides hanging out at home and playing loads of Mario Kart on the Wii, Joel's been teaching her to drive and we've been going out and about as much as possible. Here are a few highlights:

Fourth of July:

Even those the weather looked like this...

...We still had a good time. Even if we were a little soggy.

Nationals Game:

Here are Joel and Chelsea in front of the new stadium that opened this season.

And here we are inside. It was a great evening, even though the first 8 innings were sleepers things eventually got interesting and there were a couple of extra innings. The Nationals eventually lost, but we enjoyed the excitment and the Five Guys burgers for dinner.

King's Dominion:

This last weekend we spent 2 days at King's Domonion, a combo water park and amusement park. We had a ton of fun! Here are Joel and Chelsea on their way the Drop Tower. I decided to stay back and take a few pictures. A good choice, if you ask me. Our favorite ride was this one in the background, a roller coaster called The Volcano. You start out inside the volcano, so you have no idea that once you get on these magnet propulsion units kick in and shoot you out the top at 70 mph (it really is 70 mph, I'm not making that up). There's not a big drop on this one, you twist around a lot instead.

The other big roller coaster they have there was new this year, called The Dominator. Intimidating, huh? It holds the world record for longest floorless coaster and yes, it is really long! There is over 4,000 feet of track and it goes 65 mph! This one is really fun too, but for some reason I couldn't ride it as much because it made my head spin!
Chelsea and I in front of Dominator. Ahhh!
We camped out at a nearby state park on Saturday night and returned on Sunday for another day of roller coasters and water slides. I don't have any pictures from the water park (water slides and cameras do not mix), but it was a welcome break in the middle of the afternoon- not just from the intensity of the roller coaster but also from the 90 degree heat!

Later Sunday night, as Chelsea and Joel were going on some flippy-around ride that made me feel sick just watching it, it started to rain. I mean, it started to pour. People were running around like crazy trying to take shelter, and Joel, Chelsea and I were trying to track each other down. We finally found each other and ran to our favorite ride (pop quiz from earlier... The Volcano) to wait indoors their and catch another ride or two before leaving.

Here are Joel and Chelsea ringing out. We waited for about 30 minutes for the rain to stop and the ride to dry and by then the line was so cleared out we rode it 5 or 6 more times (I lost count). Here's a picture from inside the loading area.

It was a super fun-filled weekend and begs the question... what will we do next weekend?