Another Family Reunion has Come and Gone...2015 Edition

It was a quick trip down to Virginia to attend another Family Reunion of the Baker/Vassar Clan.

These are the descendants of my great grandparents, Lucy Ellen Baker and John Little Vassar, maternal grandmother's parents.

This year since my Eldest son is now living in Virginia he was REQUIRED by me to attend the Reunion this year.
After all we could take a route to the Reunion that practically took us right by his apartment door so how could he not go? ;-)

I had to remind Eldest son that he actually HAD been to the Reunion before this year.....in 1995, when he was 4 years old.

PHoto of the 3rd generation of cousins at the Reunion 26 Aug 1995.  My oldest two are sitting on the bottom step on the right side in this photo.  Eldest was 4 and Daughter was 2.5 years old.
I have no clue who's the other kids are. 8-)


So Hubs and I drove down to Fredericksburg on Friday.

The Pope was touring along the East Coast that weekend and we saw signs like this near the connectors to the PA turnpike........

The state closed down the turnpike totally east of Valley Forge and the turnpike extension for the whole weekend!  It's a good thing we took another route!  I heard it was a big old clusterf*ck outside and around Philly that weekend!
Though we didn't hit the Pope Traffic we did make a stop along the way before leaving PA.......

....to Chocolate Valhalla!

We pass this chocolate outlet in Carlisle PA everytime we go down this stretch of I-81.

 It's visible from the highway and there is a big sign.

So after commenting every time we pass it that we should stop and check it out, we actually did!

Nice address, huh?

I didn't find the prices very low actually, except for the bags of naked "seconds".  But they did have many MANY flavors you can't find in stores, like citrus or Irish cream or almond.
Lots of unusual flavors we've never had.  So call me a goof but what I did was buy a bag of individual pieces from the bins(you had to buy at least 1lb.), pay for it, then sit in the car and eat one of each(we shared one of each)to see what flavors Hubs and I wanted to buy more of.

Boy, it's a dirty job but somebody has to do it! lolz
After going into a chocolate coma out in the car we went back in and made a bigger purchase.

They had a mix and match(from the big bins)special for Halloween--fill a bag with 100 truffles for $35 or 2 bags of 100 truffles for $60 total.

We got 1 bag of 100 truffles plus a couple of Christmas boxes for holiday presents for people.
And we signed up for the loyalty rewards card and I am already almost up to earning a $5 discount on a purchase.
This chocolate stop blew our trip budget but whattheheck I say! lol
I figure last reunion trip we bought a country salt-cured ham so we are about even with the spending this trip.

After bidding Lindt adieu we continued South.  Hubs got hungry(what? a bag of chocolate isn't enough to keep you happy!?) once we hit Virginia so we stopped at a BBQ place we found a couple of years back called Big Daddy's BBQ and had a quick sammich and iced tea.

My Big Daddy's selfie fail......

Next door to the restaurant was a thrift store so we went in to browse and walk off some lunch.
I didn't buy anything but I did snap a few photos of interesting finds......

"Car Lashes"  Hmmm......who buys crap like this when they can spend their money on chocolate?!? lolz

I found KIM a new record for her Celtic classes......and yes "Bonnie Tunes" is by a gal named Bonnie. lol

 

This thrift store was for an animal shelter and they had cats lounging around the store.  I was sort of scared off of buying anything because I feared I'd get a free cat with purchase.  ;-)

It was back on the road and soon we were passing one of the landmarks along this route.........

Though we finally stopped at Lindt's we still have this one to look forward to exploring Clark Bros. in the future.

Once we got near the hotel where we stayed that night in F'burg I spotted at a light, my first one of the political season, a bumper sticker.........

After checking in and NOT being able to connect to the internet for HOURS, we met up with Eldest son for dinner.  He wanted to check out a local Asian place(Chinese/Japanese/Thai menu items).  It was a bit pricey but very good.  Eldest ended up paying for dinner and I brought him his birthday card his aunt had mailed to our house a month after his birthday..........

Then we hit the Total Wine & More store to check out the craft brewskis.......

 Funny name for this mead concoction.......sort of like Will Shakespeare's "kill all the lawyers" line, right?

I thought Hubs would like this Kings Mountain Scottish Ale made by Heritage Brewing in Manassas, Va.

For all you non-history peeps, the Battle of Kings Mountain was a big Revolutionary War win in October 1780 for the Americans.  Incidentally, Davy Crockett's father fought in this engagement along with General William Campbell.  Campbell was a signer of the Fincastle Resolutions the earliest statement of armed resistance against the British crown in America.  He married the sister of Patrick Henry and they settled in the area that become Saltville, VA in the western part of the state, where one of my direct ancestors was captured during the Battle of Saltville and ended up dying in a Northern POW camp during the War of Northern Aggression outside of Columbus, OH.  Campbell County in Virginia, where many of my maternal side relatives and ancestors are from, is also named for William Campbell.
*History lesson over for the day.*

I bought 3 single beers there to try that I've never had before.....

An O'Hara's stout made in Ireland,  CoCoNut porter made by Maui Brewing and Raven's Roost Baltic porter made by a VA brewery called Parkway Brewing in Salem.

Sitting in the car waiting for everyone else to finish up in the liquor store I noticed this Vape Bar next door and had to laugh.
Looking at all the vapor in the air in there, it's just as smoky as regular bars use to be "back in the day", minus the darkness. lolz

Afterwards we hit the Food Lion near Eldest son's apartment.  I needed to pick up some fresh veggies to make a cuke and tomato salad to bring to the reunion.  While in the grocery store the "Carole Curse" struck again....this time Eldest was the victim.

My mother, bless her heart, had an uncanny knack for making friends quickly everywhere she went.
She came to visit us when we lived in the Poconos once and I took her to the grocery store I had shopped at for 5 years, but she had never been in before.  By the time we paid for our things and left she had made friends with at least 4 people who worked in that store-2 at the deli counter, the produce guy and the cashier.  She knew their names their marital/family status and various other personal things about them.  I had been shopping in that store for 5 YEARS and didn't know any of this, besides a name or two(if they wore it on their work uniform). lolz

Eldest was talking to me while I picked out produce at Food Lion and someone who worked on the night crew cleaning floors was over by us and before I knew it, this guy was chatting away with Eldest son.
Yep, he's got the Carole Curse alright!

Then it was back to Eldest son's apartment to chat, drink a few beers and make my dish for the reunion.

Back to the motel and a short night of sleep(still couldn't connect to the interwebs that night)and the 15 minutes before we packed up and left the next morning I finally got online.  Stupid motel!

Picked up Eldest and off we went flying down I-95 toward Richmond in the rain.

Oh look!
Let's go to Kings Dominion instead.......

Another 1.5ish hours through Richmond and on soggy back roads and we were pulling into Roxabel...........

The weather the entire day was miserable so it kept down the number of folks who attended this year's Reunion by a lot.  Hey!  Most of these relatives live in or near this area of VA and ALL of them live IN Virginia so if I can drive all the way from Northeastern PA they have NO EXCUSE not to show up!
And that's all I'm gonna say about that.  ;-)

The cousins had set up a large tent and had heaters going, as well as tables set up inside the house so there was plenty of room for everyone who showed up.

I really didn't take any pictures this year besides this one of Eldest and my brother.......

I chatted with a few more folks this year......I guess they are getting use to seeing me at this thing after 3 years in a row and aren't scared of me. lolz

My brother's bbq ribs are always a big hit and this year was no different.  He always leaves with an empty pan.  My salad was enjoyed by many as well and I only brought home a small portion.

The requisite photo of me in front of the house.  Hubs didn't get much of the house in the picture though. lol

With the rain and the tent covering the backyard/patio Cousin Shelby wasn't able to get a photo from the balcony of everyone like in years past........

She had to take multiple shots and will attend to stitch them together photographically and make a group shot.  I'll share that as soon as she sends it to me because I know everyone is on the edge of their seat wanting to see that, right?  ;-)

I brought a photo to give to my mom's cousin Hilda that I found on Ancestry of the high school yearbook in the town they both lived for awhile.

Neither of them were in high school that year but they were in the band which included 7th and 8th graders too so they are in this photo.  I knew right away which girl was Hilda but I couldn't figure out who and IF(more names on the page that kids in the photo)my mother was in the photo.
This is from the 1945 Pioneer yearbook from Portlock High School.  At that time Portlock was a section of South Norfolk, VA but sometime in the 1960's South Norfolk became part of Chesapeake, VA.

Hilda & mom spent a few years living in the same town and attending the same school during WWII.   Hilda was a grade/a year older than mom. 
Hilda pointed out which one she thought was my mom......the one the red arrow is point to.

My mom would have been 10.5 years old in this photo from 1945.
The photo jogged my mom's cousin's memory and she sat and recollected some memories from that time in her life and it was nice to hear them.

She also told me how much she loved my grandfather, my mom's dad.  Evidently he spent a lot of time with them both, taking them places and doing things with them when they lived in the same town.  Hilda recalled how her own father didn't do that much and how she loved to go off with my grandfather and my mom as a kid. 
I had never heard that before and it made me smile.

So we spent a few hours chatting and eating and I showed Eldest son the house(he had never been to Roxabel since the reunion when he was 4 was held at a different location).  There was no exploring the grounds or spending time in the Marshall Family graveyard on the property as it rained incessantly.

We bid goodbye to all and my brother took Eldest off to walk the property we own jointly, the land we inherited from my mother where our Grandparents home had stood at one time.  This property was at one time part of the original plantation roxabel and was gifted to my grandmother when she married. Brother and Eldest had fun shooting off guns there.
Sister in-law, Hubs and I went off back to Charlotte Court House.   Sister in-law wanted to go see the house in town where my Great Grandmother Lucy had lived when she moved away from Roxabel until her death in 1973.  The house is now a B&B right in town with a gift shop, so Hubs dropped us off to go see the gift shop.   They were doing some renovations so there were no guests that weekend and the handyman guy let us go upstairs and see the bedrooms(Sis in-law used the pretext that we were interesting in maybe renting rooms next September).
I didn't get a shot of the room that was being used as a gift shop(women's higher end clothing and accessories)but it had been my great grandmother's downstairs bedroom.  It was strange to see it crammed full of dresses, hats and purses.
And I don't think the two young sales girls who were moving merchandise around got too weirded out when I told them my grandmother died in their gift shop. lolz

 

This was the bedroom where my parents and I stayed back in the 1960's when we visited.  It hasn't changed much except for a wall border. and a fancier bed.  My great grandmother had an old brass bed.

 And this is the other bedroom across the hallway.

They have even put a small en suite bathroom in that room.

This is actually the end of the hallway between the bedrooms.  It is now a fancy shmancy sitting area with book shelves, 3 chaise lounges and a fur rug.  The man who bought this house after my grandmother passed away was a history enthusiast/Civil War re-enactor and he left all his books on the subject in the house.

The back addition of the house was put on when my great grandmother moved in in 1965.  Until then there was no indoor bathroom.  This addition also included an indoor stairway to the upstairs and a small kitchen and den area.  Before then the downstairs was 2 large rooms and the upstairs was a large hallway and 2 more large rooms.

 The old smoke house in the backyard.

 

The old barn now used as a conference room and/or available for party rentals.  They named it for the guy who lived here after my great grandmother.

Bob Moates as Robert E. Lee standing on the front veranda at Diamond Hill.

An article about Robert C. Moates is HERE.

It was nice to see that the house is still being loved and cared for.
If you want to stay in the house, HERE is the link to their website.

In the history of the house section they don't mention that Diamond Hill was used as lawyer offices in the 1800's too(since the courthouse is right down the block)or that it was used as a boy's boarding school before WWII(I know because I have a photo of it from then that has a caption written on the back at that time).

After this trip down memory lane we drove back to the motel in Keysville......the ONLY motel in this part of the entire county!.......and some of us took a nap and I sat outside on the bench by our room and drank a cider and watched the cars and the cows.

The view from our room.....a dairy farm across the highway.

That evening we all met up in Keysville at a pizza restaurant for our annual dinner with Cousin Ruby and Donnie.
Ruby is my mother's cousins(her mother and my grandfather were siblings).  We always have a fun time catching up on our lives and kids(and her grandkids), reminiscing and laughing lots.

Almost got everyone in that shot.....

So we tried a selfie too and did worse.....just got Hub's eyeball and "almost" all of my brother's face in that one. lolz

Hugs all round and we headed back to the motel for some drinks in the room and then off to dreamland.
The next morning my brother and sis in-law met us at Sheldon's for breakfast and we ended up sitting by our Cousin Dean and his wife, Gwen, too.

We tried to be good and stay away from the "bad for us" foods on the breakfast buffet but the sister in-law just couldn't resist the siren song of bread products.....biscuits and gravy, scones, pancakes, French toast and grits. 
I was bad and had some deep fried fat back.  Imagine bacon but a lot thicker with a tough rind on it and 4 x as salty as bacon.  Now throw it into hot oil and fry it.
Yep.  It's a hot tasty salt lick.  8-)  I could only eat one and I still think I am swollen with retained water. lolz

So we did another family selfie..........

Almost.

Better but strange looks.

Bingo!  Or as good as we were gonna get. lolz

We headed back to F'Burg and stayed a little while to visit with Eldest son's GF and the grandkitty then it was back on the road toward home.

Having made a late start back, we only made one stop only on the way home and that was for dinner.  No lunch stop because we were still too full from breakfast(and I only ate half my dinner sammich too).

No return trip to the Lindt Outlet either.....just a diner along the highway in Carlisle PA.

A nice find we will have to try on another trip again.
Good prices, wide variety of meals, good sized portions and tasty!
Check out the Walnut Bottom Diner in Carlisle, PA if y'all are in the area.

By the time we arrived home it was getting dark and I got a shot of the Blood Moon just beginning to turn an orange hue before the eclipse happened.

 

 It was a quick trip with crappy weather mostly but we made the most of it and had a good time.

Sluggy

This Day in History

166 years ago today, Oct. 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore, MD.

Only a few weeks before his death, on September 14th of 1848, he gave the final reading of his poetry in my hometown of Norfolk, VA.  Of course I was NOT in attendance owing to the fact that I was yet to be born for another 110 years.  ;-)

This event was open to the public(at the price of a .50¢ ticket)and took place in the Lecture Room of the Norfolk Academy.
Mr. Poe's lecture was entitled, "The Poetic Principle" and the reviewer forThe Norfolk Beacon said: “Mr. Poe concluded the lecture by reciting by request his brilliant fantasy ‘The Raven.’ The audience seemed highly gratified by the intellectual repast which had been set before them”.

Just days before the lecture/reading Poe had performed the first reading of his now classic "The Raven" poem on a local resort  seaside hotel veranda of the Hygeia Hotel at Old Point Comfort(now Hampton, VA.

Poe had arrived in town a few days early and during a nighttime gathering of locals and resort patrons he had debuted his famous poem.

Edgar Allan Poe sent some time in Norfolk as a child and his parents spent time here as well before his birth.

His mother, Eliza Poe, was a very popular stage actress of that time, traveling up and down the East Coast performing in a troupe called the Charleston Comedians.  Six months after her first husband, Charles Hopkins, died in 1805, leaving her a widow at 18 years old, she married David Poe.  David had seen her performing in Norfolk, VA, fell in love and pursued her until she wed him in 1806.  He abandoned his family's plans for him to study the law and instead joined his new wife's acting troupe. A son William Henry was born 1807, 9 months after their wedding and then Edgar in 1809 in a boarding house near the theater where their troupe was performing.  It is said that Eliza performed a mere 10 days before giving birth to him.

David was no longer with the family when a third child, a daughter Rosalie, was born in 1810, while again performing in Norfolk, VA.
In late 1811 while preforming in Richmond, VA Eliza came down with TB and died a couple of months later on Dec. 8, 1811.  She was only 24 years old.

The three children were split up after their mother's death with little Edgar(not even 3 years old)going to live with John, a Scottish Richmond area merchant and his wife, Frances Allan.  They gave him the middle name of Allan but never legally adopted him.

So let's here it for Edgar Allan Poe today. 
Go read one of his works.

Sluggy


 

Grocery Shopping This Week & I am Finished

Well since Hubs went out on Sunday for a new computer mouse and was going right by the store,  I had him go back into Big Lots while that 20% off sale was going on to get 3 more jars of minced garlic, 4 more cans of tuna and 4 more cans of Spaghettio's for College Boy.

Another $8.76 spent on the food budget.

On Monday I made my grocery store rounds after PT where I picked up the items I had planned plus a few other items....

I bought 3 boxes of pasta at .67¢ each, used $1.25 in Qs and paid .76¢ for all.
I bought 4 cans of evaporated milk at $1.50 each, used $2 in Qs and paid $4 for all.
I bought 3 jars of Prego spaghetti sauce at $3/$5, used $1 in Qs and paid $4 for all.
I bought 6 large cans of Hunt's tomato products at B1 for $2.19/Get 2 more Free so they came to .73¢ per can.(They were the good 'no salt added' varieties too!)
I bought 7 cans of Homestyle soups at $1.66 each, used $3 in Qs and paid $8.65 for all.

I also found a 2lb. bag of flounder fillets 25% off($8.24)so I had to purchase that.  $4.12 a lb. for flounder?  Yes, please!
I also bought a 1lb. bag of baby carrots for $1(sale price and not pictured).
All this cost me $31.05 after sales/Qs for a savings of 28.40 or 47% off of reg. retail price.

I also submitted my receipt to Checkout 51 and have already received a .75¢ rebate into my account-.25¢ for buying the carrots and .50¢ for buying 2 cans of evaporated milk.
All those Homestlye soup cans qualify toward a $5 SavingStar rebate as well once I have spent $15 on select Campbell's items.  Only $3.31 left to spend to earn that $5 back.

Then I ran into the local Shurfine Market and bought this.......

I bought 2 cans of Furmano tomato puree(Weis was out of the Hunt's puree).  These were .88¢ per can so not as good as the Weis cans but still a good value.
I found 2 cans of Beefaroni in the clearance bin for .75¢ each.
I bought 2 containers of cottage cheese for the crockpot lasagna I made Monday night(so not pictured)on sale for $2 each.
I bought a head of romaine lettuce(again used on Monday so not pictured)on sale for $1.49lb.
A bunch of celery for $1.49(reg. price)and 3 bags of salty snacks(those were half price)rounded out this shop and brought my total OOP here to $16.09.
42.41% savings over reg. retail price and no coupons used.

I am now up to $77.90 spent on my October food budget and I am finished grocery procurement for the week.
I am still loving the price on that flounder I got..... ;-)

Sluggy


 

How Not to Do It

Well I had a plan but circumstances thwarted my plan and then bonehead moves made by ME just made a bad situation even worse.
Yet this is a happy ending when all was said and done.

What I am talking about is my Sam's Club account and credit card.
September 2014 I dug out a free membership card I received years ago in someone's blog giveaway and decided that it was time to cash this in for a free year of Sam's Club.

So I get to the store and somehow got talked into not getting my free regular account but paying extra($50 more I believe)and getting the super deluxe account that came with a Sam's Club Mastercard.  This meant not having to carry cash to Sam's to pay each time but the convenience of being able to swipe plastic at the store and then pay it off during the monthly grace period.
Remember that no matter how bad I botched this deal up, I always paid off the card each month, so I never paid any interest charges.
I just paid $50 in stupid tax by actually being talked into upgrading the membership. ;-)

So I was instantly approved for the Sam's Club c/c and they charged the additional $50 in membership fees to that card.
I was told two features with this account and the linked c/c were--
1. I got points toward a store reward when I paid for anything with this c/c.
2. If I decided at any time before the year's membership was up that I no longer wanted to be a Sam's Club member I could cancel on the spot and get my whole $100 membership fee refunded to me....so basically it was a year of Sam's Club for free.

So I swallowed this hook, line and sinker and was sure I'd cancel before the term was over and get my $$ back.
Hahaha!

                              Rotisserie chickens....Mmmmmmm

First off, it became fairly clear after 3 months or so that Hubs and I were at a point in our lives where we really didn't need/want to buy most items we use on the regular basis in massive quantities, which is mostly what Sam's Club is about.  Most goods(except for clothes, electronics, rotisserie chickens, pharmacy drugs, glasses, toilet tissue, etc.)are sold in large packages.  Other than bottled water and maybe fresh meat or fish(which we could freeze the extra)we didn't need huge quantities of what they sold/how they sold it.  Even buying frozen foods, since it was such large packages of items there was no way to fit it all into the freezer and who wants a freezer filled with Marie Callendar pot pies ONLY because all that packaging takes up a lot of space(even though MC pot pies are so tasty)?!?

                       You can't just buy 1 roll.

So this way of shopping may have worked out for us when all the kids were still home, living under our roof but for 2 people with a teen left at home(and only home on college breaks and during the Summer), this situation doesn't lend itself to this form of hunting/gathering/shopping.

        Lines for days no matter if it was a weekday or weekend.

By August I noticed that we had only used this membership sporadically.  Reasons why were because it was not convenient(you had to drive down the mountain into the city), it took a long time to shop there(because the store is massive and always crowded with long lines), and the having to buy large quantities too.
And just to drive this point home(that we never used the membership), I received my FIRST c/c reward in August(almost a full YEAR since signing up for the c/c and using it at Sam's Club).  It was for $10.  Meaning in almost a year I only spend $1000 in Sam's Club-and 1/5th of that spending was buying a chest freezer.

So it was decided to cancel the membership before mid-September when that first year was up.

But then my foot problem happened in early September and I was unable to get to the store to cancel the membership since I couldn't walk.  (As the membership was in my name only I had to be the one to cancel it).
Sigh.
So I kissed my potential $100 refund goodbye.

       Why was my store never empty like this?

I made plans to go in to cancel the membership anyway as soon as I could walk well enough to get to the store.
While being laid up and confined to my bed I checked my Sam's c/c account online and saw that they had charged me for another year of the premium level membership to my c/c.
Whoa!
I saw red and did a very irrational thing at the sight of this charge, which I had never authorized them to make nor did I know that this is the way they do it if you have their c/c.

I cancelled my Sam's Club c/c by clicking on a link from my computer.
This was just the WRONG thing to do I was soon to find out.

So a week or so after doing that I was able to hobble into the store and cancel my membership.
The Customer Service clerk swiped my membership card and saw I had I had been charged on the c/c for next year's fee so she called the c/c number to get my $100 for next year removed from the c/c.
Only she was told that since I had already closed out the c/c account that they couldn't remove it.
WTF?!?

What I had to end up doing to cancel the memberships and get my money back was the biggest PITA known to man.
First off, they couldn't cancel my membership at the store.
I had to PAY that $100 charge! ack
Then once I saw the payment had cleared(after 3 days)I had to call the c/c 24 hour line and cancel my membership.
Then I had to wait 3-4 days and see that I had a credit of $100 on my now closed c/c.
Then I had to call the c/c 24 hour line back AGAIN and request a refund for that $100 be sent to my mailing address.
And of course every time I called that c/c line I got a "Ron" or a "Cindy" in a call center somewhere in New Delhi who either I couldn't understand or they couldn't comprehend what I was asking them to do(as it usually confused them to no end when they saw my c/c account was already closed at my request).

Needless to say I lost $50 on the first part of this deal but I was victorious on the second part and did receive my $100 check from Sam's Club last week, 3+ weeks from when this whole shebang began...

So excuse me now so I can go put this check back into my bank account.

And take a few lessons from my mistakes.

Sluggy