Our Journey to Omaha

Our journey began two weeks ago after my husband’s baseball team won their regional. We were all on our way to Charlottesville, VA to play in a Super Regional for Div1 College Baseball.

I had less than 24 hours to get us all packed up and get loose ends tied up at my office. Talk about good times!

It was a short flight that Gabe enjoyed jamming out too.

Charlottesville’s was rich in all kinds of history. Eight of our very first Presidents came from this 13 original colony.

One of our first stops was to The Monticello, home to our third President and author of The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.


His home was like traveling back in time. Sadly I was unable to take any pictures inside. They won’t even allow you to touch a door or the wall. As everything is original to when he lived there.

We did get to run around underneath.


This was a corridor used by his slaves to access different areas of the home. I can only imagine Sally Heming’s walking this very path.

Little did I know that he was a tad OCD at keeping records and journals of his time. Thus, allowing us a glimpse into his everyday life. He would often stand out here and overlook his farm.

Thomas Jefferson had a love for agriculture. And I had a love for his two acre garden that is still maintained to this day. He would test out new plants, some that Lewis and Clark would send back from their journey into the America’s. I am sure mine is lookin' just like this back home {smile}!

My kiddos were eating this stuff up. I am happy to say, at this age, they would rather watch the History channel than Disney. They like it so much they asked to go back the next day…scary!

We visited his grave, and the graves of his family members buried at Monticello.  Yep, that's little man trying to get in.

Gabe loved the little pool they had out behind the house. It was used to store fish the slaves had caught until dinnertime.

Just two miles over lived James Monroe.

His home was not as grand but Hannah had to see it. Her elementary school is named after him.

I was in love with this 250 year old tree. I am sure people wondered why I wanted so many pictures of it. Let’s face it, I am from Oklahoma and trees like this just don’t exist in my world.

We worked up an appetite for lunch and headed over to Five Guys and Fries. I had to learn the hard way, they really mean LARGE fry!

Nana and Papa made the trip with us and drove us a few miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Breathtaking!

We planned to have a nice picnic along the way. But the massive jumbo nat's had a differnet idea. So we had to resort to a car-nic!Along the drive we found a cabin from the 1880’s with park rangers playing the parts.

Hannah and Gabe enjoyed gathering eggs.

And making Nana read every marker there was.

I think Gabe was ready to move right in!

Oh, yah …. We did play a few games {smile} !

After lots of heat, frozen Minute Maid’s, sunflower seeds and hotdogs!

Gabe got to view his second dog pile.

And we were on our way to Omaha!!!!!