A Trip "up" to Staunton

Here in the Shenandoah Valley, people sometimes say that towns that are located south of us are "up" and towns north of us are "down." I believe this is because the river runs up going to Staunton or Waynesboro and down going to Winchester, etc. I could be wrong on this. As you can tell, it still confuses me.

Anyway, we drove to Staunton on Saturday, a charming, artsy, walkable town about 30 minutes south of us. We went to see a glass-blowing festival held at a glass studio.

This was one of the guys working the glass. It was pretty amazing--they'd take this little blob of freakishly hot glass and then blow with a little tube into it to make it expand, then they'd put the long rod into the oven, spin it, and then take it out and hammer at it, then add another piece on, etc.

 Don't you love it when you think you're taking a nice picture only to discover that someone else in the shot had another idea in mind?

 As we walked along the streets (perfect weather, too), we heard music playing and stopped into an instrument store to hear a bluegrass band. I really like bluegrass.

 They played a song for Clara and she just danced and jumped and loved it. I find it very interesting how Clara has no embarrassment about certain things--like dancing in public or yelling completely out of the blue at a young man at church, "Hey!! You're CRAZY!"--but she is embarrassed about "conducting" Family Home Evening at our own house or standing up in front of the Primary room to say the opening prayer. But for the record, I was very proud of her for saying the closing prayer last week--I received the inspiration to have her stand in front of her chair instead, and she did awesome. It's one of the things we love about her--you are never quite sure what's gonna happen.

Then we went to The Split Banana for some fabulous gelato. Robbie got a banana minus the split and a teeny taste of Michael's lemon bar gelato. Clara reminds me a bit of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes in these shots--what a ham.