A couple weekends ago, Ray and I took the girls and headed down to Charleston for Ray's 10-year reunion at The Citadel. (Go, Bulldogs!) We rented a house with a few of his former classmates and, as the only children there, our girls had a great time entertaining everybody with there adorable-ness.
On Saturday, the rain held off long enough for us to take Cady and Maddy over to the campus to see the Summerall Guards perform and to stroll around the campus. We briefly visited Summerall Chapel ... we didn't want our giggling, cackling girls running around the pews to disrupt anyone's quiet meditation! Our favorite campus stop was probably the bell tower. We were very close to it at one point, and when it began to chime, the girls were very drawn to it. So we all took the very scary, small elevator to the top of the bell tower and got to the see the guy who "plays" the bells doing what he does. It was pretty cool!
Now, we had been "selling" this whole campus visit to Cady with "parade" as the key attraction. Parade is when all the cadets march out on the parade ground in the center of campus and do, as Ray calls it, a big "dog and pony show." All morning long, as we're touring campus, Cady was asking about when "fawade" was going to start. When it finally did, I'm afraid it wasn't quite what she was hoping for. In 2 words: No floats. I think she thought her bubble bath that night in our jacuzzi tub was WAY better than parade!
Unfortunately (maybe), because of rain and naptime, we didn't get to go the football game in the afternooon, but we did brave the chilly rain to take the girls downtown to see some sights, like Rainbow Row and the Straw Market. We ducked into a big candy store for shelter and ended up with enough candy to last the whole ride home and then some. The next morning, which was sunny but cold, we went back downtown to take the girls on a little horse and carriage ride.
