I have not forgotten about you, despite my lack of posting. I celebrated my 46th birthday and the one year anniversary of my blog on February 22. My Dear Husband's birthday is today and my youngest Dear Son's birthday is next week. It's been quite busy.
I have finished some reading milestones, my first audiobook and my first digital book. I will be blogging about those in the weeks to come.
The political situation with the sequester, which directly affects my Dear Husband's job, has me fuming and presents a wonderful topic for writing, which I'm sure you were expecting.
In our homeschool, we just finished a novel and I had the brilliant idea of reviewing those. Better late than never, huh?
For today, I'd like to focus on a weekend field trip we recently took. We were able to visit The Museum and White House of the Confederacy for the first time, followed the next day by a trip to Appomatox Court House National Historical Park. We had visited Appomatox once before, almost eleven years ago when I was pregnant with Youngest Son. In our homeschool, we had been reading about the Civil War and decided to visit these places since we were in Richmond for another event.
The Museum and White House of the Confederacy are two buildings, one very modern and one very old, right next to each other, nestled in between and overshadowed by stories and stories of two buildings of the VCU hospital complex. These two pictures give you an idea of how the Museum and White house are situated.
These two museums were wonderful treasures, chock full of amazing artifacts from the Civil War. The tour of the White House was lead by a very knowledgeable guide who did not seek to paint the Yankees in a bad light, which was kind of surprising to me. The tour lasted about 45 minutes. We got to see Jefferson Davis's office and bedroom, the dining room, parlors and the children's bedroom. Many of the artifacts on display were owned by the Davises. That is fascinating to me that so much survived.
The next day, we traveled the almost two hours from Richmond to Appomatox Court House National Historical Park to see where Lee surrendered to Grant. At one point, the McLean House, where the trading of letters and terms took place, had been dismantled so it could be rebuilt in another location. We learned quite a bit of fascinating information. The brief movie in the Visitor Center is not to be missed.
While we were at Appomatox, Caleb participated in the Junior Ranger Program. He was given a booklet with several activities to do and things to watch for as he toured the site. This booklet kept him throughly engaged in the exhibits and buildings. He was quite busy filling in blanks and looking for things like the Silent Witness and the wagon.
While at Appomatox, I had to ask our tour guide, Mr. Brennan, about James McPherson's book, Battle Cry of Freedom (listed in the sidebar). He thought it an excellent book and then recommended another, April 1865 by Jay Winik, which I, of course, purchased at the Bookstore. I was pleased to see the bookstore did carry McPherson's book.
I highly recommend these two historical places. Reading about something in a book and then actually going and visiting those places truly does make history seem so much more real and alive.
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