The Random of Pop Castle

Dear Familia,

I could probably write at least ten more posts about what we did at Pop Castle, but I still have all of the DC posts to do from the trip so I'll try to wrap it up here. One thing that we should have done more of: walks around the neighborhood. Pop Castle is located in White Stone, VA, which is a quaint little town on its own, but the house is nestled within a great walking neighborhood. The houses are really far apart but there are paved roads and barely any traffic. We only took one walk, but it was a good one.

Getting ready to head out. Gotta love the oyster walkway at Pop Castle. 

The GPR Gang

Checking out the real estate (all of the houses have names, I am a big fan)

Legit eagle's nest!

Abbi protecting Kiki during the pinecone fight. She looks fierce. 

Getting ready for the race. Zane had to give them a head start. 

Yep, it's a baby frog. Johnny cried when we had to put it back. 

One of our favorite rooms of the house was definitely the family room (makes sense). We watched a couple of movies [Funny story side note: We always had a hard time agreeing on a movie. One time we each put our movie choice on a slip of paper and then Johnny randomly chose a slip of paper. Even though 3 of the 7 papers said MI3, the One Direction movie Abbi picked ended up being the winner. Ask any of us about random One Direction trivia, we probably know it. Haha] Also, Zane made sure we played some board games. The Ramadan Family is definitely all about games, so I'm sure he would say that we needed to do more of this during our trip.

Family Room...games, books, tv, computer, Wii...

Cassi is clearly not happy...Kiki was eventually the winner!

We also did a lot of reading, napping, and eating (these of course making up the trifecta of pastimes of the Garcia Pattea family). I definitely should have taken advantage of reading in the hammock by the river...with a snack. Haha. PS In case you didn't realize, if you click the links it will take you to some other pics Abbi took and posted to her instagram. 

Reading in the yard. 

Mini ice cream sandwiches. These kids are obsessed with all things mini. 

Green smoothie anyone?

Madi peeking out from the hammock. Great views from this spot!

Ok, if I can figure out how to get the videos formatted then I will do one more post on Pop Castle. Then it's all about DC! Seriously, so fun. 

Love,
Jem

Cornhole, Crabs, Chocolate...and The Swing

Dear Familia, 

When not playing in the water we enjoyed a lot of other activities in and around the house. 

Cornhole 

During the trip, Zane introduced the kids to a new game called Cornhole.  Zane's description  It is a 2 on 2 game in which each participant has three tries to throw a beanbag at a wooden stand about 20 feet away.  The stand has a hole in it and if the bag goes through the hole it is worth 3 points, if it misses the hole but stays on the board it is worth 1 point, and if it misses the board completely it is worth 0 points.  You and your teammate add up your scores after each round, and the first team to 21 points wins. All of the kids really got into it...it's kinda hard not to get excited while you are playing. 

Johnny trying it out

Nice form Zane

Catching Crabs

One of the highlights of the trip was "catching crabs." The Ramadans have these big wire crab traps that you can load with bait and throw into the water. We were all impatient and tried to check the traps every few hours with no luck. After we let them sit for 48 hours straight we finally caught some. I have a ridiculously hilarious video of the crabs getting released. I will have to figure out how to get it on here so you can see. Most of the time people catch the crabs to eat, but the kids weren't really into that and Zane and I thought it best to just check them out and then let them go. 

Zane and his friends explaining everything to the kids 

Caught!

Scurrying back to the water

Hot Chocolate and Star Gazing
During our trip to Boston, the girls and I bought a bag of Burdick's hot chocolate to use on a special occasion  The stuff is ridiculously expensive, but also delicious. On one of the clear nights we decided to make the hot chocolate, grab some blankets and flashlights, and head out to do some star gazing on the dock. This was by far my most favorite activity. We didn't have any star maps (found one later that we def could have used) and it got surprisingly cold, but I would do this again in a heart beat. The Ramadans keep a telescope at Pop Castle, but we couldn't figure it out in the dark. Next time for sure.

Burdick's Hot Chocolate

Bundled up on the dock

Swing
Another really fun Pop Castle accessory is the swing hanging from one of the giant trees in the backyard. It reminds me of the tire swing we used to play on at Mom M's house in Miami. Zane taught the kids how to twist it up so that you end up spinning around in circles. They really loved that one.

Cassi on the swing

Kiki on the swing

Those are just a few of the fun things we did at Pop Castle. More pics of our time at Pop Castle coming up later today.

Love,
Jem

The Rappahannock River

Dear Familia,

Obviously, the main attraction at Pop Castle is the huge river right in the backyard. The Rappahannock River leads into the Chesapeak Bay and is pretty impressive. I knew that the kids were going to be amazed at the size of this thing since we are used to relatively tiny bodies of water like Salt River and Saguaro Lake. In fact, they kept calling Pop Castle the "lake house" because it seemed so big to them.

Jumping in on Day 1!

Although our first day was pretty cloudy, we ended up some amazingly sunny days! Regardless of rain or shine, we were down at the water every single day. We didn't do a lot of legitimate swimming because this was really their first extended experience in non-pool water. It's really weird to swim in water when you can't see the bottom. We managed to find some other fun activities though.

View on a sunny day :) 

Mud Fights 

One of the really fun things about the river is seeing all the different animals that make their home in river. We saw quite a few schools of small fish swimming around in the shallow AND we saw jellyfish! I was really worried about that, but Zane's friend Binns picked one up and it didn't do a thing to him.

Checking out the "wildlife"

We caught a few of the jellyfish to get a closeup view. Can you see them??

So ya, we loved the river. Next year we'll have to add kayaks to the list of activities. I'll have to get in shape first though!

Love,
Jem

Pop Castle

Dear Familia,

Zane, the kids, and I will be spending the next week hanging out at Pop Castle. We are extremely grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Ramadan for gifting us a week at their incredible house on the Rappahanock River.

View of Pop Castle from the Backyard

We plan to do all of these things over the course of our stay here:

Crab trap

S'Mores

Bonfire

Corn hole

Eagles nest 

Bike ride

Ping pong

Picnic

Sand castles

Hammocks

Swings

Raft

Swimming

Capture the flag

Campus golf

Dance party

Pillow fight

Hide and seek

Croquet

Running

Ice cream

Neighborhood walk

Hot chocolate

Star gazing

Breakfast at Rocket Billy's

I'll do some blog posts during our downtime, but follow Abbi (our little social media director) on instagram to get real-time updates: http://instagram.com/abbipattea.

Love,
Jem

Summer Wrap Up

Dear Familia,

I'm actually writing to you today from $30,000 feet (ok, I don't remember how many miles the pilot actually said, but we were allowed to turn on our electronic devices at 10,000 feet and we are still climbing). I think it's absolutely crazy that I can actually use Wi-Fi in the air!

Anyway, I just finished chatting with Zane on ichat and it reminded me that we had done some things over the summer that I never got around to telling everyone about. So without further ado, here are some random JZ outings:

The first time I went to DC (back in high school), we did a tour of the monuments at night and I really loved it. We finally checked them out near the middle of July, but it was pretty late when we got around to it and I was a but cranky, so we only ended up going to two of the monuments. However, we did end up going to the Washington Monument which I had never been to at night and it was AMAZING. I would highly recommend it for anyone visiting DC.

Washington Monument

The Jefferson Memorial also looked very pretty at night. Seeing this passage from the Declaration of Independence reminded me about the fact that in some Mesa schools the kids have to recite these lines. I really liked that little tradition.

Jefferson Memorial

I look so small against the walls of the memorial!

We also went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. At first, I wasn't very excited b/c museums can sometimes be a little "meh" for me, but I had a great time and I definitely want to go back. I think it's pretty incredible that all of those museums have completely free admission. They have a butterfly exhibit that was closed when we went, so I am going to have to do a little pre-planning before we go next time.

View from outside

Door Greeter

T-Rex

 We couldn't figure out if the meteor fragments from AZ were part of the meteor that left moissanite (remember from my ring) on Earth, but it was still very interesting!

Oh ya Arizona, represent!

Really cool photo installation...this was one of my faves

Cute Sea Creature

Life size!

After the museum we went to Silver Diner which is Zane's version of Denny's. Then we walked home and it took 45 minutes and my feet felt like they were on fire. Not great, but it felt good to walk off some of that greasy diner food. Haha.

Another cool thing we did was head out to the Theodore Roosevelt Island for a jog. It was actually pretty fun and they had a really cool monument on the inside of the island. Felt very "Lost" while we were there. This was of course in my running days. I have to say that even after that little running class business, I'm still not a big fan. I could bike for miles, but running is a bit of a downer for me.

So ya, that's the skinny. I should have some Boston posts for you soon :)

Love,
Jem