Wild Ride Days 2-4

We spent the weekend in Richmond with my brother, Bubby, and his family, as well as 2 cats, 3 lizards, one bunny, and a snake. I’m feeling pretty proud right now having spent our nights in the same room as the 3 lizards and all the unwitting crickets chirping and singing as they awaited their imminent doom (I'm a critter weenie if you didn't know). Jaden was in heaven. Bubby has a good size slot car track set up that is super cool. They have a Wii (enough said). The backyard is a little kid wonderland with a trampoline, rope swing, sticks galore, and a Bubby-built treehouse with which Jaden fell madly in love. Now, of course, he wants one, so I told him sure! We’d build one. In about 30 years when the tree gets big enough to support one. His reply, “But in 30 years I’m gonna be OLD!”

Having fallen hard for the slot car track, Bubby took us to Chick’s Hobbies where they race slot cars some Friday nights. Real slot cars!! Or bigger slot cars anyway. I didn’t even know such a hobby existed but it was SO cool! The tracks are huge and those cars are wicked fast. My brother says a fast lap with one of the regular cars is about 4-4.5 seconds, but there actually exist different cars that can make it around in 2. Wowza. I really felt we should’ve all been wearing protective head gear with those cars zinging around the track. I could just see taking an emergency trip to the dentist after losing a mouthful of teeth when one of those cars hit a curve at the wrong speed. Fortunately, we left Chick’s unscathed and with Jaden begging for a slot car of his own. According to Chick himself, it would only cost about $120 for a starter package AND he just happened to have 4 in stock! Lucky me! Sadly, Chick and Jaden were disappointed this very fine day.

And then we were off to Maymont…a very cool place indeed. It’s basically a very large and old estate that surely has a great story or history behind it, but 6 year olds can’t be bothered with such trivial information when there’s a nature center down the hill, a petting zoo up the hill, a koi pond/lake, ginormous trees everywhere and a bamboo forest! There were other untold wonders on the property, but after making our way down the hills, we had to freakin’ come back up. Holy gee whiz! I obviously live on flat land for a reason.

On Sunday we slept late then had Bubby's Brilliant Breakfast pizza (I have to say that's a really great name I just came up with there, but it's copyrighted Bubster. If you use it and get rich someday, my manager will send you a bill :) ). I wish I'd been smart enough to take a picture of that before we ate it. You would've been impressed and quite jealous. And lastly, we got to watch my youngest nephew play volleyball! Jaden was wearing out towards the end so we decided to head on back to Newport News. Not 3 minutes down the road I get a text from Bubby...my nephew served 9 points in a row!! Can't believe I missed that!! Sigh. Another 10 minutes down the road we ran head on into a snow storm...it was so beautiful! I'd forgotten what real snow looked like. Thankfully it wasn't sticking so driving wasn't dangerous and we made it back without incident. Well, there was a popcorn spill in the backseat, but since the rental smelled like smoke the whole weekend, I didn't feel too bad.