Tallulah!

 After Virginia, the only way was South, and, unbelievably, it was cooler in Louisiana.  The girls celebrated by dressing up and heading out to pick Peepaw's tomatoes.

 
 Farmer Millie led the way!

 

 It was a bountiful crop and unfortunately I don't have a picture of the amazing Cora chowing down on a ripe tomato fresh of the vine...something that my children would never do! 

 There's always time for a ride on the big golf cart thing...but Evie declined to drive it.

 It's really wonderful that our girls get to experience the same things we did when we were growing up...like walking through cotton fields...

 And swimming in the same pool that we had when we were kids....albeit without all the nice shade from the big tree that has been growing there for the past thirty years. It's so shady now that the pool is actually cool in the summer.  When we were kids, it was always bath water temperature.  It still has lots of crawfish in it, though.  One day I removed eight before Evie would get into the water!

 Same diving board!

 The beautiful Kate and Cora basked in the sunshine! (same grapevines!)

 There is always time for being a fairy princess and Cora was really feeling her inner fairy princess last summer. I think she might have exceeded even Evie's enthusiasm!

 Millie enjoyed a rest on the front porch.

 And we all went out for a yummy, greasy, po-boy filled lunch at Rusty's (I think that's the name) in Vicksburg!

 I'm pretty sure that Obama's win had a lot to do with Scooter the Cat's campaigning.

 Jackson, MS, it turns out, has a really fun Children's museum, where we wiled away an afternoon after much foot dragging and driving through a torrential downpour.

 Evie channeled her inner shoeless country girl,

 While Millie did some pretty serious catfish fishing.

 ...followed by princess dresses, of course,

 and a jaunt through the (slightly treacherous and filled with wild big kids) digestive system, which ended with them sliding down into a big toilet (sound effects included).  My little poops!

 Fake food always holds a lot of appeal.

 And putting on a velcro suit and then throwing oneself into a velcro wall also is, apparently, a lot of fun.

 Art work and playing peek a boo were popular past times...

 But, of course, stripping down into their skivvies and running through fountains was definitely the highlight, I think.

 Sassy!

 Even though it rains a lot in England, there are not thunderstorms like we get in Louisiana, and I really miss those torrential downpours that you can smell coming.  During this storm, we stayed on the porch until the lighting got too crazy, and then we watched the rest from inside.

 Inspired by the storm, Millie performed a dramatic piece on the piano.

 And Evie helped Lala make her famous French bread. Some day I hope we'll have enough counter space for her to do it at home, too!

 It was delicious!

 All good things must come to an end, so on our last (really hot) day in Tallulah, we headed over to the Vicksburg water park for some splashing.  Mom and I huddled in the shade while the girls were in water park heaven.

 And you can't see them very well, but all five cats (now four since our sweet Emma died) and Millie were resting in this picture.  I'm always homesick!

An All American Visit

So....I kind of quit blogging there for a while, but I'm back and committed to attempting to get things updated at least once a week.  Starting where I left off...which was our really fun visit to the US over the summer! First stop: Alexandria, VA and the DC area to visit Kate, Andy and Cora! It was hot, so they had the blow up swimming pool ready for lots of summer time action.

We were so happy to finally see where the Hoefers live and to be able to snuggle up all together with Cora on their couch!  Just before we arrived, there had been really big storms, which knocked out a lot of the electricity in and around DC, so we were feeling grateful for the fact that there was not only electricity at Kate and Andy's, but also at the hotel where we were staying.  After we got through the inevitable obscenely early waking of phase of life (jet lag with kids), staying in a hotel was really fun and the girls enjoyed going down for breakfast and picking out what they wanted every morning.

On the Fourth of July, Andy made sure we had a truly American experience and we all headed to see the Washington Nationals play.  It was the girls' first baseball game and they were excited (or as excited as young children who don't know what baseball is actually can be). 

The Metro was super air conditioned. London, take note!

Baseball hats were all the rage:

And luckily we had great seats in the SHADE! 

Evie and Mille are American hot dog fans!

Cora was happy to show them the ropes and how to be an All American Girl!

After the baseball, we headed back for a fun evening of eating too much delicious food and fireworks from the steps of the Mason's temple in Alexandria.  We could see all the fireworks going off all around the city. And since we didn't go to bed until about 11, we actually slept past 5am!  Bonus!

After growing up in the heat of the deep south, I never thought I could be such a wimp about heat, but when we decided it would be a good idea to walk through Arlington Cemetery and around all the monuments in 100+ degree weather, I think I was definitely the whiniest of all.  IT WAS SO HOT.  It's definitely hotter these days than it was when I was a kid and I'm not used to it anymore and with jet lag...it was hell.  And poor Millie nearly melted in her stroller.  Still, we persevered! But not without a lot of bellyaching (mine, mostly).  Here we are, sweating to death on the bridge that goes over the Potomac.

And here we are dying of heat stroke in front of some monument.

And next to the tidal basin near the Martin Luther King Monument (which I didn't take a picture of for some reason!!!! AARGH!), which might look cool and shady in this picture, but really, really wasn't.

 

We pretty much had blisters on our bottoms after posing for this nice picture on the banks of the tidal basin:

Finally, some relief outside of the Lincoln Memorial!! 

After spending a good forty five minutes basking in the air conditioned ranger's hut and refilling our water bottles several times, we decided to throw in the towel (I think our original plan had been to end up at a museum, but since we were slowly wilting we decided to skip that). But before we went home, the girls had a play in the shade of a big tree near the Washington Monument.  It was very hard to leave the shade off that tree...

But we rewarded ourselves with some delicious and refreshing popsicles on the way home and sensibly stayed indoors and in the hotel pool for the rest of the visit!