Virginia Beach, VA

I’m doing research on the lovely state of Virginia and I discovered that it actually has a state insect. It amazes me that lawmakers actually take the time to declare a state insect…I can see them arguing over it;can’t you?

I know you are dying to know so I’ll tell you now that it’s the swallowtail butterfly. Now, you may say, who knew that butterflies were even insects. Well, they are.

It turns out that they really love parsley as well. I know this because we have a lot of parsley in our garden and several caterpillars on them. We looked on the internet and found out that our caterpillars are actually swallowtail larvae.

The kids are enjoying watching the caterpillars grow and we are hoping to watch them spin a chrysallis and emerge as butterflies eventually.

If you have children and they want to learn about butterflies, check out the children’s butterfly website. I’ve also seen(and we’ve personally done this before) that you can buy and watch them grow into butterflies even if you don’t have a backyard.

Sadly, on Friday, our beloved retired Seeing Eye Dog crossed the rainbow bridge. He was mentioned in my profile, so I’m taking the liberty to mention it here.:)

Zodiac was 13 1/2 and lived a full, wonderful life. He came to live with me when he was 5 weeks old, and my oldest was 6 months old. I trained him, sent him back to The Seeing Eye for training and then, got the call one day that he would eventually go blind as he had retinal dysplasia. They offered him to me as a pet. We brought Zodiac back to PA. He was a faithful friend during my horrible divorce and the ensuing years of custody battles, and he was my shoulder to cry on when my 2 oldest were diagnosed with the human version of what he had. They are both now legally blind.

He survived many a road trip with screaming kids and lived thru a van malfunction on the side of the PA turnpike when we moved to VA where he had to stay overnite with us in a hotel outside of Philadelphia. I can still see us all pushing the dog thru the slippery lobby floor in the hotel while people watched…

He volunteered time as a therapy dog at a nursing home; he was a faithful nanny and protector to my children as well as the kids of the neighborhood as well.

This is lovely you may think, but what does it have to do with VA Beach? Well, we discovered that there is a pet crematorium in VA Beach which I highly recommend. Having had other pets(also Seeing Eye Dogs) cremated, I can attest to the fact that I am most pleased with this service.

Cherish Pet Cremation Services is tucked away on a private dirt road off of London Bridge Road in VA Beach. Shirley Dale is the owner of the business and both my husband and I talked with her at length. She honestly seems to care about the pets and families that she works with. I’d also recommed checking out the website as there are links which deal with mourning and bereavement.

So, I am updating my profile folks…we live now with the ashes of 2 retired Seeing Eye Dogs.

Oh, we also visited a bunch of animal shelters this weekend(more on that later) and found our family’s new best friend: he’s a black lab mix named Chip(as in chocolate chip).

The East Coast Surfing Championchips are here in VA Beach!

I’ve heard of the event, but never actually been to it. This year, we hope to change that as the skimboard competitions start at 8am tomorrow. No, we’re not skilled enough yet to compete, but it will be fun to watch.

Check out the website here for more info.

There are a bunch of events and activities including music and refreshments.

In today’s online local newspaper, they also have a wonderful(not surfing terms, forgive me, but hey I’m not even going to pretend that I know anything about surfing other than to be able to appreciate how hard it is to do). You can check that out here–http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=130975&ran=14824
I’ll post more when we get down to check the event out.

Also, if you are here locally and want to try out some surfing, but have never surfed, look up our friend Troy Smith. He teaches surfing school right here on the beach front. He’s friendly, and flexible. You can take just one lesson if you’d like.

This past week, we made a trip to PA to see family and attend a bunch of family events. And so, we went from flat landscapes to rolling hills and lots of traffic to one lane roads.

On the way, we played games I printed off the internet. Check out this website for lots of fun games and things to keep the kids busy during those long summer car trips.

You’ll all be glad to know that we survived the trip–all 7 of us. The baby did very, very well. Yeah! It was worth it to have my 83 year old grandmom see her newest great-grandchild.

On the way, hubby and I were playing along with the scavenger hunt. It made me think about this blog. See if you can guess which state would be most likely to have such an item–PA or VA.

1. Person on a porch smoking cheap cigarettes
2. Tractor with metal “tires”
3. Fungi that glows in the dark
4. Funny cake
5. A town called Chantilly
6. A town called Virginville
7. People who say ya’ll
8. People who say “you guys”

How did you do? The odd numbered comments refer to VA and the even numbered ones are PA.

I found this link on one of the local newspaper blogs. It’s a lot of fun!

Take the quiz and see how much Southern blood shows up in your speech patterns. I had a lot of fun, and as expected, I my speech shows a strong “yankee doodle” flavor, although hey, I did get 26% Southern.

I’m learning ya’ll.

I’d like to begin a series of weekly posts on fabulous facts about Virginia. We’ll begin the series by mentioning a little bit about the controversy over the state song.

Yes, controversy. In fact, VA is right now songless. Gasp. Virginia has retired it’s old song Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginny” and designated it as song ermeritus. This song was composed in 1940 by James Bland a prominent Black composer and song writer. You can read the lyrics and listen to the music here

For a little while, so the story goes, it appeared that a new state song had been chosen. The song was Virginia by Lynne Rinker. You can listen to that song and read about the entire song debate in length by surfing over to the Virginia State Song webpage. Even if you don’t give a peanut about the song debate, I would encourage you to listen to the University of Virginia Glee Club singing Virginia. Most interesting, Virginia Beach is specifically mentioned!

So, which song do you favor?

Virginia is a mecca for history fanatics. Being such a fanatic myself, I was thrilled when I moved down here and discovered the plethora of historical sites in close proximity to our house. Many battles of both the Civil and Revolutionary war occurred locally. In fact, judging by the number of “Yankee Go Home”(actually they say, take I95 NORTH) bumper stickers I see, many folks are still fighting the Civil War, but that’s a blog for another day….

During one of my many visits to local bookstores gathering curriculumn for the upcoming school year, I noticed that Gallopade Press publishes a lot of local interest books and activities for children. I highly recommend their products. Gallopade is the brain child of local author Carole Marsh. She’s written and published a bunch of quality products of local interest.

One of our favorite Gallopade Press products is their Virginia Mural. Your children can color the mural all the while learning about VA facts and history. There are many, many other quality products and books to choose from though. These products would make great “rainy day” activities for the kids during your trip to the VA Beach area. If you are local, you can find a variety of books at the local Barnes and Noble stores as well as the Teacher and Parent(TAP) stores.

Good news for Canadian tourists!

The beach has some special money saving deals for y”all! The website is most informative and has downloads in French and German by the way.

I have to say that traveling at the beach, I haven’t noticed or heard a lot of foreigners, unless you count those living about the Mason Dixon line(which some southererns do I have to say) as foreigners.

I strikes me as funny the number of folks I find visiting/moving here from Pennsylvania, my home state. The thing I find even more hysterical is that MOST Virginians I talk to would love to vacation in Pennsylvania! They speak about going to Amish country and also to see Hershey Park. It wonders me, as we would say in Amish land(translation–hmmm…I wonder why?) You live next to a beach, with loads of theme parks and you want to go to a land locked state to a theme park that is designed around chocolate?

Oh well…more sand for me I suppose.

One of the best sites to visit when you are visiting VA Beach is the Virginia Aquarium. There’s a lot that goes on at the aquarium(and that’s another post entirely), but one of the neat things they do is wildlife rescue.

That, my friends, is a transition to today’s topic. It seems that a kayaker found an entrapped turtle off the coast of NC, and the aquarium was called out to do a rescue.

It turns out that the turtle wasn’t just any turtle, but a rare green turtle. The green sea turtle is now endangered, but long ago numbered in the millions before they were exploited.

Not all is doom and gloom in this story though. You see, it was discovered during the exam that this particular turtle is, ahem, with egg!:)

You can follow the story yourself as it unfolds on the special site that has been set up for above said turtle, now named Tiki Jr.

One of the things I really appreciate about living in this area is the great number of opportunities for disabled children/teens/adults.

In fact, I’ve heard that military families with special needs children often request to be stationed in this area because of the services available.

Virginia Beach has a therapeutic recreation center with a number of different programs geared towards ages 14-25. I’ve been doing some research as I have 2 disabled children and there are also programs in Chesapeake and Norfolk, which are close to the Beach as well.

In addition to recreational opportunities, you might want to check out Sugar Plum Bakery in Virginia Beach. It employs and trains handicapped people for meaningful employment. The pastries and pies at this bakery are absolutely scrumptous and they also do tours of the facility as well. Sounds like a win/win sitch for everyone–can it be that you can “have your cake and eat it too?” OK, that was a sad attempt at humor, but isn’t it great that you can enjoy wonderful pastries and know that you are helping disabled folks at the same time?