Welcome Home Ceremony

We left the house at 10:15 pm Thanksgiving night, and almost exactly an hour later, we were sitting in a hangar on Fort Campbell Army Airfield, waiting for an airplane to land.

We waited and waited, ever so patiently.

After an hour and a half of waiting, the Army band started playing Christmas songs.

And then we went outside and waited some more, watching for the plane and counting down the minutes until it was supposed to land.

We went back inside and waited some more while the returning soldiers got into formation and marched into the hangar.

Finally, we got to see what we had come for...

And after waiting for another hour or so in a different hangar...

we finally got to take him home with us...at 4:00 in the morning!

(photo credits: Jaela and Macey)

(Click here for more photos from the Clarksville newspaper)

Jamestown Through Jaela's Eyes

Powhatan Indian Village:

Ships at anchor:

Riverfront Discovery Area:

James Fort:

(The musket firing demonstration...he fired, she jumped!)

(Self-portrait in the bathroom on the way to the van)

Jamestown Through Macey's Eyes

Powhatan Indian Village:

Ships at anchor:

Riverfront Discovery Area:

James Fort:

(The musket firing demonstration...she jumped as she took the picture!)

Jamestown...Just the Facts

Jamestown was very hands-on, and fun for everyone. There was a museum inside (no pictures allowed), and outside there were four places to visit and experience: Powhatan Indian Village, three replica ships at anchor, a Riverfront Discovery Area, and James Fort.

Powhatan Indian Village was set up with different sized homes, complete with beds, fire pits, and feathers, arrows, and animal pelts of all kinds hanging on the walls. There were places for the kids to grind corn like an Indian would have, and they were free to try out the beds, touch the pelts, handle the (unsharpened) arrows, and explore every nook and cranny.

Inside the village there were deerskins stretched out for the kids to scrape with oyster shells, and along the walkway nearby, they had an example of a hunter's camp set up, along with a garden area.

Due to the flooding from the Nor'easter, we couldn't explore the ships. So we took pictures as we walked past them, and headed to the Riverfront Discovery Area where they had examples of Indian canoes in different stages of completion. After we had examined a water-filled finished example, the kids got to grab oyster shells and assist in scraping out a canoe-in-progress.

The fort was just as hands-on as the Indian village had been. There were armor and helmets to try on, character actors to talk to, cannons to check out, a musket-firing demonstration, a storehouse, church, homes, and gardens to explore, and an armory full of swords, spears, pistols and muskets. We spent most of our time at the armory, where the man in charge was very patient with the kids' questions and requests, and was very knowledgeable about 17th century soldiery. He even had the entire first two paragraphs of the "Instructions of the Marchall for the better enabling of a privat soldier" memorized, in 1611 Old English!

That concludes the summary of our trip to Jamestown; where we went, what we saw, and what we did. In other words, just the facts. Coming soon will be two separate pictorial blog posts entitled:

Jamestown Through Macey's Eyes

Jamestown Through Jaela's Eyes