Our second day in Williamsburg was much warmer, and not as . . . mucky since the snow had pretty much all melted the day before. We started our day at the blacksmith shop and then moved on to the Wythe house. We were lucky enough to tour the Wythe house while "Mr Wythe" was home. He told us about his ideas for teaching law . . . he'd have made a good "homeschooler", his ideas were very "hands-on". He conducted "moot courts" and "moot legislatures" on days the real courts & legislatures weren't in sesson so his students actually got to try their hand at the things they'd be doing as lawyers. Novel idea isn't it?
Since it was such a pretty sunny day, we took a few minutes to run around in the gardens behind the Wythe house, and visit the chickens, before heading on to the . . .
. . . basketmakers (and since these pictures show them off, and it's my blog, so I'll brag if I want to. See the cute shawls I knit for the girls? I'd made myself a bigger version of MiniMe's purple one before Christmas and MiniMe kept trying to steal it. So, since it's a pattern that knits up really quickly, I made one for her, and a pink one for Sassy, for Christmas. When we realized how well they went with the colonial dresses, and that it was going to be cold enough to need SOMETHING over the dresses when we were there, I decided last minute to knit one for Little Bit too. I let her choose her yarn, she chose a light lavender color. I was planning to knit it on the drive to Williamsburg, but forgot the needles I had used for the other too, so her's ended up knit on smaller needles, which made it a tighter weave, and shorter. Even if it had been longer, I think I still would have opted to stitch it together into a poncho/cape so she didn't drop it and drag it on the ground.
Another stop that day was the Magazine and Armory. Where the gunpowder and weapons, and general army supplies, were stored.
Walking from the magazine to the courthouse, we walked across the town "green". Apparently the miles we were walking wasn't enough to burn little girl energy, so they burned some extra energy running around on the green.
No visit to the courthouse would be complete without playing in the stocks.
Little Bit INSISTED she could be in the stocks too LOL.
She decided the leg stocks were more her size.
While big sisters were in the court house pretending to be a judge or lawyer or some such (I think my dad got pictures of that, but I forgot to download the pictures off his camera before we left), Little Bit entertained herself with a stick. We also had a fascinating conversation about horse poop and why the horse left it's poop in the middle of the street. I LOVE two-year-olds!
Other places we visited on day 2 included the weavers (small bit of trivia . . . one reason hemp fabric isn't as widely used as it could be is because it wears so much longer than cotton. Manufacturers don't want that because it means less repeat sales), the cooper, gunsmith and foundry, Everard House, and another stop at the coffee shop (the girls (and the rest of us) like the colonial "chocolate" drink they let you sample at the end, and each tour guide gives different information so we learned new things each time too).
For variety, I showed Little Bit how she could stand on the "step" on the back of the stroller (a leftover from when I had 2 toddlers but didn't want to mess with an actual double stroller) part of the time. She thought it was great fun to ride on the back and tell Mama to "go fast!"
And when she got tired of riding, she ran along beside for awhile too.
And that was day 2 . . . 3 more to go!
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