Cheapeake VA Wedding and Portrait Photographers | JL Keeney Photography

Our first stop during our trip was to George Washington’s birth place. It was so peaceful and the views were just beautiful. If I was a park ranger, I would want to be stationed there. We took the tour of the house, then strolled through the grounds for a while. Jeff and I took some portraits of Katie and Wilson while we were out there. As well as some pictures of the sites to see. While we were walking around Jeff found a black snake coiled up sunning on a barrel. Turns out he was dead, but Jeff still was able to make me scream. I took a picture of it for you.  The sky was soooo blue, and there were fluffy white clouds everywhere.  We visited the blacksmiths shop and saw two guides building a fire.  There were also pigs and horses to see, and a very cute scarecrow.

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My parents (Lisa talking here) moved to the middle of nowhere eight years ago. They couldn’t get away from the Hampton Roads hustle and bustle fast enough. They did wait until I was out of the house before they did it. At first I thought they were crazy. I mean, the Northern Neck is a nice place to visit. But to live? That’s a whole different story. Through the years I’ve gone up to visit them every few months. We haven’t gone up since before Jeff and I were married, making it the longest time between visits ever. We had a lot on our plate last year and a difficult pregnancy. Katie (our four year old) has been bugging me almost daily to go visit “grandma far away”. Jeff and I made room in our shooting schedule to take a long weekend and trek up to Heathsville. Heathsville, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a quaint little country town about twenty minutes from Kilmarnock. There’s one stop sign at a three way intersection. Their claim to fame is Rice’s Hotel/Hughlett’s Tavern. My parents are part of the group who have restored the tavern (it’s now a restaurant), the hotel (a museum and gift shop), and built a blacksmith shop. They hold a farmers market on the third Saturday of the month, which you should definitely check out if you’re in the area. But enough about Heathsville, let’s talk about why we visit.

My parents live in the middle of the woods, which they love. My mom is a quilter, and if you’ve noticed all the wonderful quilts around our home, you should know that she made them all. My dad is a woodworker. He’s actually retired from his first career (30 years on the Navy), but he hasn’t actually retired. He works all the time. But he loves it, and it gives my mom plenty of time to quilt, so she’s okay with it. His work is amazing, check out his website Andrew Pitts Furniture Maker HERE.  One of the kids favorite things to do is ride on Grandpa’s tractor.  He took them both up and down the driveway before we left, which was the highlight of their trip.

While I love visiting them, I’m usually super paranoid that the kids are going to break something. So we try to go out and do things while we’re there. This time we went to George Washington’s birth place, a berry farm, First Friday Walkabout in Kilmarnock, and of course the Irvington Farmers’ Market. At the Farmers’ Market we met a super sweet lady from Charlottesville who’s parents live on the Northern Neck too. She makes these wonderful handmade albums that we want to start offering to our portrait clients. I picked out a sample and will take some pictures and post about that once I fill it. Let’s just say I got so excited Jeff had to practically drag me from her booth. The good news for her is that my excitement helped to quickly fill her booth with people, and by the time I left half of her inventory when I first entered her booth was gone. I only bought one book. I wanted them all. Seriously. Anyway, I’m going to post some pictures from our trip in the next few blog posts. Enjoy!

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To celebrate the end of Wilson’s first year of school (kindergarten), we took the kids to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center.  We had a wonderful time seeing the exhibits and exploring the grounds.  The first thing we saw was the turtles.  There were so many of them, and one was out on the walkway sunning himself.  I started taking some close-ups of him, and while I did he put his hand out, like he was saying “please, no more pictures!”.  I felt like the paparazzi!  We also saw some baby turtles in the baby turtle nursery.  Wilson wanted his picture taken with them.

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