Time With My Girls

I spend lots of time with my daughters, actually, most every minute. But vacation time is different. We had three and a half days in Gettysburg to do whatever we wanted while Fred was attending his seminar.

First we had to figure out the lay of the land before we could roam around and look for things to do. Soon we had a map in our heads and knew where everything was. Gettysburg is not very big, but the battlefield can be confusing to find where you want to go with all the one way streets.

The girls' choice for our first event--go to the outlet mall at the outskirts of town. Shopping at home is usually stressful for me. There is always some item we must find and we are always on a tight schedule to get back home. This day, no pressure. We wandered in and out of stores and the girls found some fall clothes. They both finally spent the Claire's gift cards that they got at Easter. Liana bought earrings and Arielle bought a purse.

We drove into Gettysburg for lunch. The girls wanted Chinese food and we found Ping's Cafe on Baltimore Street in the center of town. On our April trip we ate the worst Chinese food ever at a different place, but this restaurant was one of the best. We each thoroughly enjoyed our food, but best of all, we had fun just being together. It is a special treat to have lunch out with my daughters. We just never do that at home.

We visited small shops along the street after we ate. The girls won't let me take silly pictures anymore. I had to coerce them to pose in front of the statue of Lincoln, but of course, they don't want me to post those pictures here. We passed the David Wills house where President Lincoln stayed when he came in November of 1863 to dedicate the National Cemetery and deliver the Gettysburg Address and I really wanted to tour that museum. But this being our first day, we had to plan our expenditures, and the girls had already told me they wanted to see the Hall of Presidents.

So that is where we headed next. This tourist attraction is a wax museum with life-size models of each President. Visitors go from room to room and chronologically listen to each President tell what was happening during his presidency, and in some cases, hear his actual words in his own voice. It was a condensed history of our country in about an hour. Some of the Presidents looked remarkably like the real person, some not so much so. Still, we found it very interesting and sometimes creepy when certain figures seemed to be looking right at us as we sat listening.

The girls said later they enjoyed seeing the men's fashions change through the years, as each was dressed in the attire of the time period when he lived. In another room were smaller models of each First Lady. These figures were not made to look like the actual women, but attention was given to their clothing and hair styles that they wore to the Inauguration. We were told they were modeled after the Smithsonian collection, so of course, some day we would like to see that.

So ended our Day 2 in Gettysburg. We met Fred for dinner and headed back to the hotel. For the girls, evenings in our room while on vacation are just as fun as whatever we did during the day. I love seeing them so happy.