Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware (Tiptoe Through the Tulips)

It's funny how creaking floors and sticking doors that would normally irritate you in your own home somehow seem quaint and quirky in an historic rental vacation home.

Everyone at our partial family reunion seemed to enjoy the roomy four-bedroom home, with special appreciation for the huge screened in porch surrounded by lovely trees and bushes.

We gravitated to that area in the evenings and again in mornings.  It made a great place to relax while Emma or one of the adults hid Easter eggs around the first floor for the rest us to find.

Sometimes, Emma seems so sophisticated, so anxious to be an adult, that I fear she may be missing some of the fun of being a child, but then she becomes positively giddy running around a play ground or hunting for Easter eggs, and I know she is indeed still a fun-loving kid like me.

When we stopped at a Walgreen's to pick up Keurig coffee packets after a casual Greek dinner at Opa Opa, Emma was really thrilled when I gave her a small chocolate bunny, which she ate over the course of the weekend.  She also picked out Silly Putty as something she wanted to buy for herself.  Yep, she's a kid.

After brunch at the Hollywood Diner, where the portions were humongous but we managed to eat most of the food served to the table, we were off to our pre-designated destination, the nearby Nemours Estate, another Du Pont mansion.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be closed, indicating we should have called as we did for Winterthur the prior day.

Time for plan B.  We could go to the third prominent Du Pont mansion in the area, Hagley Museum and Gardens, on the banks of the Brandywine River where the Du Pont story began, but Gina and Laszlo had been there previously.  They also had previously toured Winterthur, where of course Julie, Emma and I had been the day before, so their votes were for Mt. Cuba Center, a sprawling naturalist garden set amid hundreds of acres of rolling hillsides.

The weather, which had been forecast to be rainy, was so nice that the consensus was soon formed to go to Mt. Cuba, though I felt bad that Amy and Lukas would not see one of the Du Pont Mansions, but they both work indoors, so I'm sure they were happy to be outside.

The 30-minute drive to Hockessin, Delaware, again took us past forests and colonial houses.  For some reason, it reminded me of a place where the CIA would put a safe house to protect a witness or something.  Anyway, it's a beautiful region.

Mt. Cuba has a mansion, a colonial revival house completed in 1937, but it's considerably smaller than Winterthur.  Mr. and Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, who established the gardens, are associated with the Du Ponts, and in fact had family ties with many prominent American families including the Roosevelts and George Washington.

Their passion was for conservation of the native plants of the Piedmont Plateau Region, which stretches in a wide curve from the Atlantic Coastal Plain all the way into central Alabama.  Among the trees are Alabama Magnolias, a variation of the tree that my parents planted in my front yard in Westminster, California, where I grew up surrounded by farmlands myself.

The protection of native vegetation and beautiful creatures like butterflies that live there has taken on additional significance in the face of expanding neighborhoods and townships developed to attract an expanding population.  Mt. Cuba acts as something of a laboratory to test shrubs, trees and ground cover to help developers and homeowners make wise choices for sustainable landscapes native to the region.

With many species of plants that change blooms with the seasons interspersed with small ponds, there's much to appreciate, and as at Winterthur, the flowers change with the seasons to make each visit unique.

All that being said, I guess it's surprising to say that the most beautiful part was the formal garden, where incredible non-native tulips bloomed.  Then again, perhaps that's not so surprising in light of the fact that the Dutch founded New Amsterdam in America in what later became New York.

Wilmington was initially part of New Sweden, but in 1655, the uber-wealthy Dutch Republic, --- where Tulip Mania had recently peaked in 1637 --- conquered Sweden in Europe's Second Northern War, absorbing the North America settlement of New Sweden into New Netherlands.

While most of us think the origin of our country is more British, the Dutch were here first and their trading sense is still part of our American legacy.

We stayed until close to closing.  We returned home for more Easter egg hunts.  Rather than go out for dinner, we opted to bring back Mexican food takeout from El Diablo, a restaurant similar to Chipotle located a couple of miles down the road from our vacation house.  When Amy and I returned with the food, we ate at a large dining table in the screened veranda porch.

Our family normally would play games of some sort, but for this weekend break, we mainly just talked and hung out.  Amy gave Emma a Dutch braid, then took it out to re-do it when it didn't turn out as well as hoped.

At her Circus Arts class the prior week, it seemed to me that Emma was struggling to find the confidence to do a backbend, which I tried to explain to her requires the trust that her eyes will see the ground after you come around giving your hands plenty of time to react.  I was happy when I had convinced her to let me spot her and she did it multiple times, eventually without my touching her back at all.  When we tried the next day, however, I assumed she didn't need my touch and she came down without enough support in her arms.  Her head didn't touch down hard, but it was less than the full mastery I hoped she had accomplished, but maybe with newfound confidence and a padded mat at class, she will be able to arch backwards to the support of her hands.

Later, we decided to watch some teen movie retellings of Princess fairy tales, Sydney White and A Cinderella Story after Emma went to bed.  The other girls and I had fun interjecting comments as we watched, but I think Laszlo and Lukas were less than thrilled with the choices.

The next morning was Easter, so of course more egg hunts.

We had purchased a few items at the grocery store on our drive home, including a chocolate donut and pistachio muffin for Emma to have for breakfast.  Amy bought ingredients to make Charoset, a Passover dish made with walnuts, dates, apples and grape juice or wine that she enjoyed having with Jewish friends in past years.  Eaten as a thick topping on matzah wafers, it was delicious.

After our Charoset breakfast, Julie and I went with Amy to St. Stephen's Lutheran Church where her good NYC friend Rachel's mom and dad attend services regularly, and we had the opportunity to meet the parents.  It was a beautiful church with open wood beamed ceilings and intricate stained glass, but possibly because the area's Bishop led the service, it went on too long.

We left after an hour and forty minutes, missing the last five minutes or so, because that gave us only twenty minutes to clear out of our historic rental house that was twelve minutes away.

With a quick walkthrough and loading luggage into our cars, we were soon headed over by the Christina River for a final hike before driving home, and after checking several restaurants eventually settled into Joe's Crab Shack for our vacation's closing feast.

We were somewhere near historic Ft. Christina, the first non-native settlement in Delaware.

As a closing factoid so you can possibly win a trivia game on your next cruise, Delaware is known as "The First State," because it was the first of thirteen former colonies to ratify the ground-breaking U.S. Constitution.