Oh hello! We're busy over here in the watermelon patch soaking up the last few days of summer before school starts (full day kindergarten! sob!). One of the constant on our adventures these past few weeks has been Natibaby Kurpie Chic, courtesy of Marsupial Mamas. Is there anything like linen for summer? I don't think so!

Kurpie Chic is a 25% linen/75% cotton blend which means it is both supportive and breathable -- thin, but never diggy on the shoulders. (In fact, it reminds me a lot of my favorite hemp/cotton blend, Didymos Deep Blue Sea Fish.) It's got good glide, with the passes sliding into place and though I don't feel much microtexture when I rub it between my fingers I have never noticed or worried about things starting to sag. Because of this, I find myself reaching for it when I know I'm going to be outside for a while, being active and not in a position to stop and re-wrap, like on our picnic to Fort Monroe last weekend, where a friend shot these photos.

Kurpie Chic has done great in every carry I've tried it in (from a simple ruck to Maxine's Back Carry to Charlie's Cross Carry), but in my opinion, it shines as the perfect double hammock, as it's got a lot of recoil without being constraining. It's a 6, which is size base -1 for me, but wraps long because of its thinness and moldability -- I find myself being able to do lots of base size carries in it. Very versatile, which is appreciated.

On our picnic it got passed around a bit, and was used on all size babies and even wrapped a bump! I'd recommend it for any wrapper, of any experience level -- it's the perfect all-purpose wrap and would be great in a minimalist stash or as a wrap to last from newborn to toddlerhood. Just be sure you put in the time with it -- Kurpie chic came to me washed and prepped and fairly soft but basically melted the more work I did breaking it in.

Thanks to Marsupial Mamas for letting us play with this beautiful carrier! You can check out their entire selection of Natibaby, including some gorgeous exclusives, here.

A few more from our day of fun:




 Good luck to everybody starting school tomorrow!

There are a few requirements for a fall road trip in Virginia: beautiful foliage, mountains, and an interesting destination. This past weekend, we found all of these things at our visit to Montpelier, the home of President James Madison, so hooray!

Montpelier is near Charlottesville, in the Piedmont, just over two and a half hours away from Hampton Roads. It gets overlooked in favor of Monticello and Mount Vernon, but it really shouldn't be. It's not a bad drive, especially this time of year, when everything is so scenic. It was nice to arrive and find everything we needed in one place, with a great visitor's center, restaurant, and coffee shop on the grounds (we were especially glad for the coffee shop).

First, we explored -- the columned temple, the slave quarters, and the archaeological area where we could even help dig for pieces of pottery and tools dating back to the colonial era. Then I took the tour of the house while James and Anouk went down to the children's area to play. It was a small tour, only covering about five rooms in the huge house, but the guide gave us so much information that it seemed much more.






After the tour: more exploring, including the gardens built by the duPont family, who owned Montpelier in the '60s (and painted it pink!), and watching the sun set behind the Blue Ridge mountains. Such a great way to spend a November afternoon.




PS: The visit also gave me a new respect for Dolley Madison. You always read about how her parties were so big and that she basically invented ice cream but I had no idea how beloved she was by pretty much all of Washington society (Congress unanimously loved her, which should tell you something, because when is the last time they agreed on anything?) This is a great article by Smithsonian Magazine about her.

In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day today, here are some photos from our trip to the Frisco Native American Museum during our Outer Banks vacation back in September. As I mentioned when I originally wrote about it, we had the bad luck of some rain during our stay, which took away some of our beach time. But on the other hand (positivity!), it motivated us to explore some of the places around we otherwise wouldn't have.

The Frisco Native American Museum is one of those places. So jam-packed with artifacts and crafts, it can be a little overwhelming if you don't stop and take a moment to clear your head. Every inch of the space is covered with something beautiful and historic: quilts and carvings, native clothing and headdresses, drums and flutes and coins and !!! Things galore.

But it's definitely interesting. We must have gone around the place four times trying to take everything in, including the gift shop (which includes some wonderful examples of native art and jewelry!) and the kind of random but cool thrift store attached onto the back. Then, as the sun came out, we walked the boardwalk trail outside of the museum building, stopping to look at examples of shelters and dugout canoes. (It was sort of cool in itself to be outside in OBX at a place that wasn't the beach, if you know what I mean?)


One final random/cool aside about the trip:
we got to bang on a traditional wishing drum before we left! It was hilarious to watch everybody screw up their faces and decide what to wish for. Anouk wished for a dog, but it's OK that I tell you, because that one's definitely not coming true anyway.

As you might have seen if you follow @watermelonsgrow on Instagram, James, Anne and I visited Colonial Williamsburg this weekend to take advantage of the GREAT opportunity they currently have going on. Through August 15, #HRVA locals can receive free passes to Colonial Williamsburg. All you have to do is show your ID with your local address on it, and boom! You're in. 

We've done the CW thing several times (click here for our other Williamsburg posts), but because A. is so young and the passes are so expensive, we'd never done the full tour until now. It definitely was a better experience, being able to pop in to visit the places that are usually for pass-holders only -- the printing office, the jewelers, etc. We really enjoyed visiting the shoemakers and watching them at their craft and J. of course was fascinated by the guns and ammo at the town magazine.



Local residents can also upgrade to an annual pass during their visit for only $21 for adults and $10.50 for children -- a fabulous deal considering that the passes usual go for three times that amount. If you think you might want to visit this fall or throughout the holiday season (one of the best times to visit the CW), now is definitely the time to act.

One of my favorite things to do in Hampton Roads is visit the many different historic houses that our area has to offer. From colonial times to the Civil War to 20th century glamour, this area has seen so many great events of US history. It's such a wonder to be able to step back and experience a taste of them by walking in the footsteps of families who lived here in the past.

So for this Friday Five, here are some of our favorite historic houses to visit in #HRVA. There are so many to choose from though -- this list is in no way exhaustive! If your favorite isn't on the list, please mention it in the comments. Happy weekend!

1. Moses Myers House (Norfolk): The Moses Myers House is neat because of its urban location in Downtown Norfolk -- so often you feel like you get an idea of how rural people lived back in the 18th century but you don't hear much about city life. The house is gorgeous, with a spooky history that captures the imagination.

2. Bacon's Castle (Surry): Bacon's castle is one of the only examples of Jacobean Architecture in America, and one of the oldest structures, to boot, dating all the way back to 1665! Younger kids might not like the tour, which can be a little long, but older ones will enjoy peeking into the carefully kept rooms. Everyone will enjoy the gardens and grounds.

3. The Hermitage Museum and Gardens (Norfolk): The summer home of a wealthy family, the Hermitage is a beautiful Arts-and-Crafts mansion on the Lafayette River. Besides that, it has 12 acres of gardens to explore, and a pretty impressive art collection. A nice place to spend a summer day with plenty of chances to -- check out the events calendar here.

4. Adam Thoroughgood House (Virginia Beach): Built sometime around 1720, the Thoroughgood House is one of the oldest surviving houses in the area. Furnished as it would have been when the Thoroughgoods lived there, kids will enjoy this look at colonial life.

5. Riddick's Folly (Suffolk): When Mills Riddick built this Greek Revival house in the 1830s, the community was a little taken aback by its over-the-top grandeur. Today, though, it stands as a beautiful example of antebellum life.

PS: I wrote about a fun family day at the Old Coast Guard Station in Virginia Beach coming up this weekend over at Fun and Free Hampton Roads. Check it out!

One of the things I wanted to do when we were in Hatteras over Mothers Day weekend was stop by the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. The Outer Banks of North Carolina is one of the deadliest areas in the world for shipwrecks, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is dedicated to giving a closer look at the shipwrecks and maritime history of this perilous area.

Highlights of our visit included seeing an Enigma machine (which washed up in OBX from a torpedoed German submarine in WWII) and the original Fresnel lens of the Hatteras lighthouse (which was lost after the Civil War and then rediscovered in a government warehouse over 100 years later). Turns out lighthouse lenses are beautiful up close, glass carved into hundreds of facets and rainbows shimmering everywhere.

Anouk enjoyed the scavenger hunt, too -- she found every single thing on the list and was awarded with a prize. She had to think of a word to describe each item and some of them were really funny -- she described the pirate Blackbeard as a "mean guy" which I think is pretty spot on (kids who are into pirate lore will be in heaven at this museum).



But overall, I think our favorite part of the museum was the exhibit showing some of the things that have washed up from shipwrecks over the years, from silver tea sets that became family heirlooms to portraits of mysterious strangers that somehow survived the waves. In the 1990s, a container ship of Doritos foundered off the coast and island residents had a heyday scooping up the hundreds of bags that washed up on shore! The photos of the beach littered with bags were striking.

The museum is right across from the ferry landing to Ocracoke, and also from Ramp 55, which leads to a part of the Hatteras National Seashore frequented by tons of  kite-boarders. We wore our bathing suits under our clothes and after we left the museum, spent an hour or two watching them swoop around and soaking up some rays. Not a bad way to spend a day at all.


 

The Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach is in the process of being renovated -- completely renovated, which means every single thing in the hotel is being replaced. Which also means that every single thing in the hotel had to go -- so the new ownership threw open the doors in an unprecidented move and hosted probably the poshest, most exciting rummage sale that Virginia Beach has ever known. All of the furniture, fixtures, artwork, EVERYTHING in the hotel, all up for grabs.

For those of you who don't know, the Cavalier is kind of like Virginia Beach's version of the Plaza, or the Greenbrier. It hails from the '20s, from the time when Virginia Beach was just beginning to be known as the fabulous resort town it would become. Over the past 80 years, the 350-acre hotel and grounds have hosted a wide range of celebrity guests (Bette Davis! Judy Garland!) and presidents, and even the US Navy when it was taken over as a training ground during WWII. The hotel has gotten a little worn around the edges in recent years, but still serves as a sign of the kind of Jazz Age glamor that you usually only get to read about in books.

The first day of the sale, the line stretched out of the hotel doors, past the name CAVALIER etched into the green lawn. We waited a week to miss the crowds -- which also meant we missed most of the truly great deals. The place was eerily empty when Molly and I and our three kids showed up, the ballroom echoing and the gorgeous, iconic wallpaper torn from the wall in big patches. Even the staff running the sale seemed over it already. But there was still enough to keep us looking. We passed stacks of headboards and mattresses and groups of TVs, even a towering Christmas tree or two.



We ended up leaving with not much more than we went in with -- M. scored a mirror for something like $5 and we both left with pieces of the heavy red wallpaper embossed with the Cavalier logo. But I'm still glad we went, even if we weren't among the ones who walked away with great finds (we did have a vicarious thrill watching others leave with rolls of the beautiful aqua, magnolia-printed wallpaper and antique furniture). Molly and I had both been to events at the Cavalier in the past, and it was interesting to see another side of the place, to have the chance to roam the halls and really have a look at things (the famous deco swimming pool -- empty -- was a sight to see).

The kids enjoyed their time there, too, running around peering at everything and making friends with the kids of the other shoppers. It's not every day you get to roam around a real-life "castle," is it? We're excited to see what's next for this grand old Oceanfront landmark and we appreciated the chance to say goodbye to a place that holds so much local history. 

The Cavalier sale will run through the end of April, if you want a behind-the-scenes glimpse of this local landmark (or maybe an industrial icemaker of your very own?)