Virginia is a Big State…part deux at Desperately Seeking Sanity

May 10th, 2007

Ok, now I can wrap up this trip and put it to bed… but first…

My BFF, Becki, asked me in a smart butt kinda way, the difference between a Commonwealth and a State…

and because I’m ~~brilliant~~ know how to search on Google, and because I thought others may wonder as well… here is the answer…

There is no difference between a commonwealth and a state in the U.S. To Locke, Hobbes, and other 17th-century writers the term “commonwealth” meant an organized political community — what we today call a “state.” Officially Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts are all commonwealths. When Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts became part of the United States, they merely took the old form of state in their title.

Today, commonwealth also means a political unit having local autonomy but voluntarily united with the U.S. These are Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s carry on…

I left you yesterday as we finished our tour of the Yorktown Victory Center…and good news for us, had all the children that we were supposed to have and none of the other green shirted children…

We then had a nice tour of I-64 as our bus driver followed the other bus driver who apparently didn’t know his way around…

And then we eat…

Where?

On the grass.

Did I mention that it had rained the night before?

Did you know that when you sit on the lawn to eat and it rained the night before that your butt will get wet?

The bus driver pointed that out to me…

“What are you doing getting on the bus with a wet butt?” he joked…

“What are you looking at my butt for?” I retorted.

“It was just kinda out there…”

Reason 467 that I need to lose weight and thank goodness for Beth and Tales from the Scales….

Now, Williamsburg was awesome from the moment we landed back in time…

BUT… it took us a little while to time warp… while waiting to get off the bus, I see all these men walking around… a few of them talking into their sleeves…

Secret Service…

Know what that means? Dick Cheney is somewhere close… little did we know…

He, along with the Queen, are right here at the Williamsburg Inn… and our bus is parked not 150 yards from it.

That’s the best I can do as far as witnessing the Queen… sorry…

but walking around, it was hard to get over the amount of news vehicles there… and I’ve been in TV in some form or fashion for 12+ years now… so I don’t get excited to see camera crews normally… but there were so many of them… and then this… The Virginia State Police Command Center… (someone needs to tell them we’re a Commonwealth….)

It really was amazing….

Our tour guide was amazing… Menzie, a historian, and normally a story teller in Historic Williamsburg actually told the Queen a story the night before… he was a little on the weird side but oh.my.gosh…. the kids were far from bored.

Later we found out the the tour guide nazi was with our other group… she scolded the Vice Principal in front of the kids and they all had to walk on the grass so as to not disturb the rocks…

Menzie took us and let us try on clothes from the 1700s…. This is Matthew dressed up in “rich people’s clothes” and he loved it!

One thing I did learn is that boys wore dresses/skirts until the were deemed old enough to wear pants… the kids looked so cute in their dress up clotes… every single kid (all 16 of them) got to put something on…

I was sad that we had such a short time with Menzie. He was amazing. I did hang on every word. He’s one of those people that truly has found his gift and as he walked through Williamsburg he knew everyone (all the people dressed up in the colonial wardrobes) and it really was like we had been transported into a different era…

Now, a little side note here about Williamsburg (because Misty asks the good questions)… there are about 80 families living in Williamsburg in the historic homes there. They work there as well and if they wish to make a change to their home, it’s almost as bad as passing an act of Congress… I’m talking about even hanging a picture…

In addition to that, they must leave their homes open (unlocked) 24-7 so that visitors can come and visit… and their homes look like they did back then… meaning that little girls rooms won’t look like someone threw Pepto Bismol up with all the Barbie stuff and the boys’ rooms won’t be adorned with all things NASCAR…

Just a little FYI….

Leaving Williamsburg, we were pooped…. but it was only 4:30 in the afternoon… we still had that long trip home…

Dinner was scheduled at the Golden Corral at 7pm in Charlottesville…we slept just a little on the way there…and when we pulled in there was one bus already there… not our other bus…

so we sat there to wait for the other bus…and we see two more pull in… not ours though….

finally, ours shows up… and there are now 5 buses (the charter ones people) at the Golden Corral.

On a Friday night.

On Seafood night.

I don’t know how it is where you live, but here? All you can eat seafood buffets, regardless of how good the food is, draws folks out of the hills… so you can imagine how crowded this might be….

and we’re hungry…

I will say this for the big GC… I was impressed… we waited no more than 15 minutes to be seated and they didn’t run out of food…and we had a great time asking the boys what their favorite parts of the trip were (not including lunch and dinner, because that’s what each of them said they liked the most).

Back on the bus, bellies full and little feet too sore to carry us any further… two hours until we get there… and God Bless the High School Aide that we had with us… she had the Lion King… so we popped that in, but most of the kids were conked out…and bless their hearts… they were so cute…and I had a heck of a time waking them up when we got back to the school!