Virginia – Valerie's Voice

Week Two in Virginia

*Forgive me if this comes to your email twice. I tried publishing this at 6:30 am but it hasn’t gone through so I recreated the post and am trying it again.*

Continuing a photo journal of our adventures from week two, visiting family, in Arlington, Virginia (showing one to three…photos a day).

The impressive nave and chancel of the National Cathedral. It filled up for the advent service.

Sunday, November 30, was the first Sunday of Advent, and it was a special one. We went to an advent service in the Washington National Cathedral.

Heavenly voice and Bible readings filled the spectacular cathedral, and made for a memorable event.

Gary and I decided to take an overnight trip up to Pennsylvania to visit Gary’s family. His hometown is only about three hours away from where we were staying in Virginia, so we got up early Monday morning and drove to Pennsylvania for an over night visit.

One perspective of the farm where Gary grew up, in Pennsylvania.

We stopped at his younger sister’s farm for a visit. Then, we drove to the farm where Gary grew up. The friendly Mennonite folks who live there invited us in for a chat. They are lovely people.

Another perspective of the farm…this is the field where one of my favorite pictures was taken of our two young boys running in the field.

Later that evening, a lot of family members joined us for a dinner out, even though it was last minute.

We decided to drive back Tuesday morning, forgoing another farm visit to Gary’s other sister’s farm, simply because it was snowing and slick driving conditions. But we were grateful to be able to take this time to reconnect…our short stay was very enjoyable.

On Wednesday we ran errands and did some laundry and just hung out. Zoey and I made enchiladas for dinner.

We were ready again on Thursday to take the Metro into the city. The Metro is such a great system. We stopped at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, honoring the 34th U.S. President, on our way to the United States Botanic Garden.

The Lincoln Memorial model made of plant parts.

There was plenty to see indoors with special December exhibits: models of DC landmarks made from plant parts, and thousands of poinsettias were placed in groups all around the gardens.

A lovely display of pink/white poinsettias…I don’t think I’ve seen this sweet color of poinsettias before.

Next, we walked to the White House to check out the new ballroom construction, but we couldn’t see a thing.

After school the kids helped us count the miscellaneous coins the family had accumulated over the year. The bank said the coins had to be counted and put in wrappers. It turned out to be a fun project…and profitable.

Fun looking at and counting all the coins, and finding several foreign coins in the mix.

We went up to the rooftop to observe December’s full moon, Thursday December 4.

Lunch on Friday was in DuPont Circle. We met friends who were former neighbors in Northfield for many years. They moved to the DC area a few years ago.

We had a lovely lunch with our friends from Minnesota.

We arranged to meet at a restaurant along the Metro line so both parties could just hop on the Metro. We had a great time. As we walked back to the Metro station we stopped at a pop-up Christmas Market which was fun to peruse. There was leftover dusting of snow on trees and roses… it felt “Christmassy.”

Still swinging on the playground. The previous dusting of snow melted.

Zoey had Portuguese lessons again on Saturday. We went on another pleasurable walk with Ezra. Mid-afternoon we walked to a park near their apartment. The kids still enjoy play grounds. We stopped for an ice cream cone on the way home. It’s never too cold for ice cream.

Week One in Virginia

We left Northfield a week before Thanksgiving to go visit our son and his family in Arlington, Virginia. On our way to the airport I realized I still had my slippers on! Fortunately, we were close enough to home so we had time to turn around and get my shoes! (I won’t mention the full cup of coffee I spilled all over my backpack at the airport.)

I guess I was excited. We were going to spend time with our son and his family. They are moving to India. We were happy to have some quality time to create more memories before they leave… and it was fun to take the grandchildren on adventures while mom and dad stayed home to work and pack! 😉

The nice apartment building where our son’s family has lived since January 2025.

This blog post will be a diary: a photo essay, with one, or maybe two, pictures per day to capture our first week. It was challenging to select the photos out of the hundreds I took!

A walk in the woods with Ezra. Still a touch of fall in the air.

Our first full day we dropped Zoey off for Portuguese lessons and Gary and I went for a long walk with Ezra. This is the day we made chocolate chip cookies which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.

We also “packed” Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes online. This is an outreach project by Samaritan’s Purse that delivers gift-filled shoeboxes to children in need worldwide.

For breakfast on Sunday morning our granddaughter, who especially likes to cook and bake, made waffles. Her brother made blueberry syrup.

Ezra had a play date scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Zoey and I made a mosaic candle holder from a craft kit.

On Monday, we walked the kids to school. We did so each morning, and we also picked them every afternoon. It’s a .8 mile round-trip walk.

…a beautiful building made with marble from Italy.

On our first Monday while Tim & Andrea worked/packed, Gary and I took the Metro to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Performing Arts. We walked down the Hall of Nations (flags from all countries) and the Hall of States (flags from all states). Minnesota’s new flag was on display. The Kennedy Center is a beautiful building, made of marble from Italy, with chandeliers from Sweden. We had a fantastic tour guide…all to ourselves.

A hall inside the Kennedy Arts Center, with beautiful crystal chandliers.

Tuesday morning Gary and I went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is a somber, yet incredible, must-see museum.

Pictures of shoe piles and pictures of hair piles (from the victims) left a lasting impression. We also went through a special exhibit designed just for kids, which was very well done.

Tuesday afternoon, Zoey taught grandma how to make Flan!

The kids Thanksgiving break started on Wednesday. We took the grandkids to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center which is a Smithsonian Museum near Dulles airport (not to be confused with its companion museum, The National Air and Space Museum).

The Udvar-Hazy Center displays hundreds of air and space craft, including the Space Shuttle Discovery, a Concorde, and a Blackbird SR-71 (fastest manned jet).

The space shuttle Discovery was a sight to see. There were so many interesting aircraft in this museum. It was impressive, and a lot of fun.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner together. The kids and I made apple crisp to go along with the pumpkin pie.

Of course the kids were off school on Friday too, so Gary and I and the kids hopped on the Metro …

The Metro system is so easy to use and a great way to get around DC.

and took it to the National Gallery of Art.

I really liked this place.

I was immediately drawn to the first painting I saw in the museum. I envisioned myself in the painting…looking out over Lake Superior.

One really needs multiple visits to do justice to this art museum (I could say that of all of the museums), but this first time for me in the National Art Gallery was a lot of fun. We each chose an animal, color, and object to look for in the art works.

In the courtyard of the apartment building.

On Saturday, we walked through the Farmer’s Market near the apartment, took a short drive along the Potomac River, the kids showed off their skills on their hover boards, and we all went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant.

*****

Night falls over Washington DC…

6:49 pm on November 24, 2025.
Views of the capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Performing Arts building (the large building with white lights on left side of photo) to name a few…

Oops…

We are spending a few weeks with our grandchildren in Virginia. One of the activities we like to do together is bake. We found the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies in the cupboards so we decided to make a batch.

It’s a team effort…the three of us… our oldest granddaughter, her brother and myself. We don aprons, wash our hands, and always take turns measuring the different ingredients, adding them to the mixer, stirring them all together and rolling the cookie dough into balls to drop on the cookie sheet.

Into the oven they went…one cookie sheet at a time. We checked them after nine minutes, the lowest time of the suggested 9-11 minute time check. As we opened the oven door, all three of us were there to inspect. And what we saw was not what we expected. Hmmm…

They don’t look like they normally do…what did we do wrong?

Let’s go over the ingredient list...

Sugar – check
Flour – check
Baking soda – check
Salt – check
Butter – check

Wait...oops...the recipe calls for 1 cup of butter. Oh, Oh...we only added one stick of butter when it called for one cup, which is two sticks.

Darn! I’m sorry kiddos, I told us the wrong amount of butter to use.

“It’s OK grandma…they’ll probably still taste good.” (They’re so sweet!)

And, surprisingly the cookies were tasty! We finished baking all the cookie dough and ate them all up over the next two days. In fact, I may use only one stick of butter the next time I use this recipe…they were that good!

It reminded me of a Thomas Edison quote: “I have not failed. I have successfully discovered twelve hundred ideas that don’t work”

…only this mistake worked!

In An Instant

As we drove away from our son’s home in North Carolina, we headed north through rolling hills of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. It was scenic! And bright sunshine added a nice touch for a lovely drive.

Redbud trees were blooming everywhere…like weeds in the forest. They were beautiful. This photo was taken in Indiana, a day after the scenic drive in the Virginias, and not as scenic.

In West Virginia, we pulled off the highway for a break and then it happened so fast…

We heard the crash…it sounded so close…

Then, instantly we felt the impact…the car behind us was pushed into our car by a third vehicle behind her.

We had stopped for a traffic back up. A red car was stopped behind us. A third car – a gold car – rammed into the red car which rammed into our car.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, including the little doggie in the middle, red car.

Thankfully, our car was drivable since it was the first day of our journey home to Minnesota. The middle, red car was able to drive away too. The third car had to be towed away. It looked totaled.

Thankfully, the damage to our car was minimal.

Thankfully, the police were quick, kind and efficient.

Thankfully, it was afternoon and we were soon going to stop driving for the day.

Thankfully, we have insurance.

We have a lot to be thankful for. It could have been much worse. A reminder, life can be changed in an instant.

Memorable Hikes – Chincoteague, Virginia 2018

Continuing my series on memorable hikes…

While in the Williamsburg area with our friends, we decided to take a day trip to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. To get there we had do drive through underwater tunnels and over bridges with the Chesapeake Bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other side.

At the southern tip of the peninsula we stopped at the visitor’s center and learned in the northern part is where the ‘famous’ wild ponies roam. (The difference between horses and ponies is the height. Any horse that stands less than 14 hands is considered a pony and the average height of a Chincoteague Pony is between 12 and 13 hands.)

I asked how likely it would be to see the wild ponies if we drove over an hour to get to the Wildlife Refuge…the assistant said it was likely. So we took off for Chincoteague.

The Chincoteague ponies started roaming the Chincotegue Island around 1750. Evidence seems to indicate the ponies survived a Spanish galleon shipwreck in 1749. The ponies have been there ever since. The refuge retains a permit to let 150 ponies graze on the refuge so they have to decrease the herd once a year. Annually, in late July, thousands of people gather to watch the ponies swim cross the Assateaque Channel and then the ponies are auctioned off.

After we arrived at the refuge, we were directed to a paved trail. Along the trail we stopped and talked with an older gentleman who told us he came to the park twice a day, with his binoculars, to look for the ponies. He described two bands (small groups of ponies) in this area. Riptide, was a brown male with a blonde mane and his band was near-by. Maverick, the lead male of a different band, was farther away at this time.

We continued walking but didn’t see any ponies. We came to an “unofficial trail” heading into the woods towards the ocean so we decided to follow it. Once we came to the ocean we talked with a couple who had just seen ponies and they told us which direction to try. We walked along the beach. It was low tide, so there was a wide swath to walk on (with a few obstacles to climb over.)

This turned out to be quite an adventure but we persisted and continued walking until finally we saw movement in the trees, inland along the shore. We spotted one pony, and then another, and another until there were about fifteen. And we identified Riptide grazing in the grass. The ponies were beautiful.

After taking several pictures and watching the wild and wonderful creatures, we started hiking back. On our return trip the tide was rising but our beach swath was still passable. We darted into the woods where we thought we had exited a couple hours ago and finally found the original paved trail and walked back to our car.

It was a exciting and adventurous hike, searching and finding the Chincoteague ponies in the wild.

Colonial Williamsburg

A view down the main street of Williamsburg, VA – the Duke of Gloucester.

Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum with restored buildings and actors in period costumes making 18th century history come alive. It’s picturesque and well done.

While driving through five states to get from Minnesota to Virginia we started listening to the book 1776 to get a flavor of what was happening during that time period. It was interesting and thought-provoking. It made us think of how a few men together discussed, debated, and made decisions that changed the life of the colonies forever. All the events leading up to our freedom from England is not something we think about much, but it was interesting to have a refresher history lesson. The problems we experience today are not easy and the problems they experienced back then weren’t easy, but it was fun and enlightening to get glimpses of our past played out for us.