Monday, August 23, 2010

How Did They Do It?


We had a wonderful, busy time on vacation last week in Williamsburg. We bought a bounce pass that allowed us to mix up our week so that we could spend as much time as we wanted in Colonial Williamsburg, and the two amusement parks, Busch Gardens and Water Country. Of course our kids, especially our 5 year old, wanted to only go to the amusement parks, but our son who is 9 was intrigued by the amazing, historic city of Colonial Williamsburg. It definitely helped that my husband and I had prepped both of the kids for what they were seeing and the museum interpreters did an amazing job of explaining life in Colonial times.

My kids got to participate in one of the main jobs that most kids of that time had to do....lug water from the well to their house. The interpreter explained there was no running water and she asked the kids, in the program, to think of how many times a day they turn on a faucet at home. She explained that it wasn't uncommon to have to carry 50 buckets of water a day to use for cooking, cleaning and general use. I couldn't help but wonder how people survived in Colonial times with the never ending cycle of work and the lack of modern day conveniences. How did they do it? I'm sure, just like we do, they developed regular routines and short-cuts for common tasks and built in relaxing time when they could. My kids did discover that kids did have fun in Colonial times too, and my son now loves the Colonial game, Shut the Box.

In the spirit of being in Williamsburg, and because we didn't spend that much time at our resort, we didn't watch t.v., the kids didn't play video games (okay, maybe we used it as a good behavior bribe once or twice), and we didn't check e-mail every day. It was so nice to be disconnected and to be focused in the present.

This wasn't one of the most relaxing vacations we've had (I find amusement parks exhausting), but we thoroughly enjoyed our time together, learning and sharing interesting aspects of our country's history and having fun.

Now it is back to reality that there are two more weeks of summer and a lot to accomplish before the kids are ready to be back in school.

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