Mark Bartlett pianist

Our last real vacation day had no agenda, and the weather was promising, 70 degrees and sunny, so no one was in a hurry to get going. I waited around a while this morning and finally decided to go for a run around 8:30, figuring by the time I got back everyone else would be…

Another sunny day today and getting progressively warmer, although still not up to the average for this time of year. Took a while to get everybody out of bed and ready for breakfast. Chloe knew we were off to some historical stuff today, so she lounged around in bed pretending to be asleep, reminding me…

Today was a travel day, but the distance to travel was not that ambitious, just from Shenandoah to Virginia Beach, about 250 miles. It was still cool and overcast, an occasional sprinkle, so we didn’t feel like we were missing too much by driving much of the day. Took our time getting ready in the…

I figured this morning the restaurant would once again be overrun with bus tour people, and we were out of the room and ready to eat by 8:30, but they were long gone by then, and we could dine in relative peace and quiet. The eggs and toast had been a big hit with the…

Slept in this morning and took forever to get going and get to breakfast, but there was no huge rush because it was still extremely windy outside. We were back at the lodge for scrambled eggs before 10am, and this time the windows weren’t rattling quite so much, and it wasn’t raining, but it didn’t…

Nobody was moving very fast this morning either, both times we were availing ourselves of the free breakfast in the lobby at close to 9am. It was still cold and windy, just an occasional sprinkle, still not great zoo weather. I was skeptical that we’d see any pandas, but Beth convinced me to go anyway,…

With only one full day to do Washington, DC, it would have been nice if the weather was half way decent. But instead it was lousy, cold and wind-blown rain most of the day. Fortunately we had plenty of advance warning of this, since it was going to be the same thing in Boston later…

This was one of the more complicated starts to a vacation in recent memory, and it began months ago with the fact that historically, everyone goes away for school vacation week except us. Now that the kids are both in school, your choices of vacation weeks are limited to about 9 weeks in the summer,…

Last real day of vacation, tomorrow will be mostly on a plane and be three hours shorter than normal. Beth and the kids were barely awake when I left the room at 9:30 this morning. Grabbed another fruit frappacino and muffin at Starbucks on my way to the convention center, not something you’d want to…

Had the day to myself today since Beth was taking the kids to Legoland. They didn’t want to get up this morning, still trashed from a long day at Disney, but she got them going and out the door around 8:30 or so. It’s about an hour’s drive south to Carlsbad, and they spent the…