Today I took Charlie, June, Adam, and Mason on our spring break outing to the North Carolina Transportation Museum, up north of Charlotte, in Spencer, NC. I have wanted to go honestly ever since we moved here nearly 40 years ago, and today I finally made it happen. We had SUCH a good time. Some of the exhibits were in railroad cars, like this one. It was supposed to be one of those cameras where you could take a picture and then e-mail it to yourself, but we couldn’t get it to work, so I just took this picture of Adam in front of the background :-).

All of the regular seats were taken when we boarded the train, so we just sat on one of those bench seats and had to turn around to look out the window. It was still a fun ride 🙂

This evening we went to Denise’s house to celebrate Ellie’s 1st birthday.  Lindee was holding her when we got there – Ellie was feeling feverish and not that great due to shots she’d received earlier in the week.  Poor baby.

After supper and some Tylenol, she perked up enough to enjoy her birthday cake 🙂

What a special spring break adventure we had today, when Jeff, Mallory, Clara, and I headed to Grover, NC, to take in the Presidential Culinary Museum.  Mallory and I had seen the billboards about it, and we just decided this was the perfect time to go check it out.  We got there in time to take in the guided tour, and it really was so interesting.  This was in a display about the presidents and the British, and all of the displays had lots of interesting items, but a good many of them revolved around food.  I had heard this story before, about the time Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt entertained the King and Queen of England (I did learn today that it was the first time a British monarch had ever visited the United States – in 1939), and fed them hotdogs.  This is the letter the queen wrote to her mother about their visit, where she talks about eating the hotdogs.  The guide told us that she insisted on eating it with a knife and fork, and that the king, especially, loved them.

Jeff took this picture of the girls and me relaxing on the porch of the museum after we finished our tour. Such a fun morning.

Yesterday was my first time being in charge of a bereavement meal at church, and as it turned out, I had Mallory and Clara for the day, since it’s spring break week.  They went with me and were huge helpers.  Here is Clara taking around one of the dessert carts.

What a beautiful day we had!  June helped play chimes for the opening to the church service.  That is her on the right in the front pew.  People were scattered throughout the congregation, and they stood and rang the chimes – it was beautiful.  That’;s my buddy Evie who was sitting right in front of us and ringing.

Our annual picture with our grand ones…

After Valentine’s Day, when they finally marked all their items 90% off at Dollar General, I got all the stuffed animals that didn’t look explicitly Valentine-y for ten cents a piece. They were a big hit with the kids. And I loved how the guys hid some of them for the hunt out here after lunch 🙂

Here are some of the kiddos at the church. I took this picture of the crowd while they were listening to the Easter story being told there by the tomb, before they headed outside to find eggs. That’s June’s long hair, right in front of the camera.