After breakfast we sat on the couch, Randall was watching a boring revolutionary war show on the history channel while I was checking pinterest, facebook, e-mail, and the news to make sure I didn't miss anything in the eight hours I was asleep. (Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, I know that in a year when I have a newborn, that sentence will piss me off! Ha!)
Around 9:20ish, Randall hands me the i-pad, "We could go here today..." I check it out, Battleground Park... Colonial Life Ways...
http://www.nps.gov/guco/index.htm
Colonial reenactors, people in costume, awesome real displays...
An actual place where the revolutionary war happened?! Heck yeah! I'm so game. Let's get ready to go :) An hour later we were there, woohoo! (and it was free!)
Cannon!
See the dudes killing each other? Cool!
Really, it was a very pretty park.
Oh, and yes, I totally rocked that bonnet! :D
This is hilarious, the colonial hat and who's ya daddy t-shirt... hehehehe
and because I can't go anywhere without getting in trouble... :)
See those open doors on that building in the back on the right? Those are the front and back doors open on a house. That is an actual house from the 1780's. It was lived in until the 1980's, it had been modernized but they took it back to its original state and moved it here.
In most houses the only book they owned was a bible. They may have had a pamphlet or be able to get a 6 month old newspaper once in a while, that was what they used to teach the children to read.
Most families had 12 to 15 kids, there was a 50% mortality rate for children under five. They all slept in this one room house. During the hot summer nights mom would have told them to go sleep in the yard under the tree. During the spring and fall, she probably would have put some of them in the attic (which was called something else), and in the winter they would have slept in front of the fire place just near mom and dad. They used mattresses stuffed with leaves and sheep's wool that they just rolled up in the morning. Mom and Dad were the only ones with a bed.
This is the little lantern where they would put the candles. They only made candles once a year, in the winter, from either animal fat or beeswax, and they used dandelions for the wick.
This is the summer kitchen, which is a separate building so you don't heat up your house when it's 100 degrees outside, brilliant.
She is making ink.
This is for making apple butter, seems like a ton of apple butter to me :)
I love when history comes to life, it's so much more interesting in person, and what a perfect thing to do on Independence day.
By 1:00 pm it was hot, and time to go home for some lunch.
Then around 8:45 as the sun stared to set Randall and I decided to get going... we walked 3 blocks up the street to sit on the curb outside the coliseum, which is where they were having a big fireworks display, (it's also where they have all the big concerts and flea markets and so on) we had perfect seats...
I thought it was pretty cool how fireworks look on my camera, I used the fireworks setting and this was the first time I got to use it.
I hope y'all had a great 4th of July too!
I'm totally joking with that accent by the way... I just happened to here a lot of it yesterday! :)
