Washington DC

Kind of as an explanation of the posts to follow that I have already written (did you follow that?) this year instead of going on a big vacation we decided to have a staycation with several little daycations. The first part of the week Jesse was at scout camp, and I went to the zoo with my mom, and then on Thursday and Friday we went on a few adventures once Jesse got home. This post takes us to Friday when we went in to DC.
We took the Metro in again, and once again, no accidents. They are going awfully slow at certain parts though. We started the day at the American History museum. We saw just a handful of places, including the flag as a follow up on our Ft McHenry visit. Then we moved onto the Natural History museum. Nate really wanted to see the dinosaurs and I took Graham to see the hall of mammals. After that we headed out to the Air and Space Museum. By this point Graham had fallen asleep, so I sat with him while Jesse took Nate to see some of his favorites. Even though we hadn't really seen that much we were ready to go home. I guess when you live so close to places like this, there really isn't this feeling of needing to get the most out of each time you come.
So that was the third day of all day trips, and were were pretty worn out that night, but I'll tell you, it sure was nice to have everyone in their own beds in their own rooms each night. There's enough to do in this part of the country that we can do this every year! :)

A Day in Baltimore

We started our day in Baltimore at the Aquarium. Of course, it's the 3rd time this year we've been so we were able to do it quite quickly. The main attraction for the kids is always the dolphin show. They love it. This time however they added a new exhibit about jelly fish. It was really cool. Nate and Graham loved it too. After a bit of time in the Aquarium and a little lunch we decided to head out.
We next went over to Ft McHenry. Neither Jesse nor I had been there that we have ever remembered, so it was on our list of things to do. We spent time first at the waterside. There is a nice little park there right on the bay. I don't know what it is, but I LOVE the Chesapeake Bay.

After spending a little time in the park outside of the Fort we ventured inside. It is actually a neat place. There are large earth "walls" that have all sorts of building built into them. The flag that was flown while we were there was smaller than the original, but still pretty cool to see. I guess if the wind is right then they fly a flag that is the same size as the one that FSK saw. After we saw what we needed to see we left to head home. Luckily enough we didn't hit traffic until we were almost home. We left later than planned and were on the beltway right at the start of rush hour, but it wasn't really that bad.

The Zoo

Since Jesse was at scout camp for the first half of the week we decided that we would go on a little adventure. We gathered up my mom and brother and went to the Washington DC Zoo. We did all of the normal zoo things. We took the Metro down, and we made it there and back without getting rear-ended by another train, so that was nice. We got down there and it took us a while to actually see any animals. Nate kept on asking to see some animals. We finally got up close and personal with an elephant, and from then on, it was a pretty good day, with plenty of animal sightings. We made it home before rush hour, and were all pretty tired from a fun day.

The Fourth

This year our fourth of July consisted of the above picture. We were supposed to go to a breakfast in the morning, but well, we were still tired from the lake the day before. So when the alarm went off, we decided to just sleep in a bit. So we went out to lunch, and then headed over to Baker Park to see what was going on. That could have been fun except that when we got out of the car and put sunscreen on some of it got into Nate's eye, and that pretty much made him miserable the whole time. Poor boy.

So we came home, and Nate's eyes started to feel better. Since Nate does not like loud noises and explosions we decided not to even try to fireworks. By the time we did parking and found a spot and stuff it just wouldn't be worth it for Nate to cry the whole time. Maybe next year we'll try. Anyway, we did sparklers at about 8pm, while it was still light. Nate actually was brave enough to hold them this year, and he loved it. He still asks to get more sparklers and do it again.

So that was our fourth. Not too exciting, but it was nice for it not to be filled with the stress of going a million places.

The Lake

Can you spot Nate at the top of the trail?

Our picnic area.

In the past we have always taken time each year to go camping with our friends the Vandres. This year however, we decided that it was too much of a pain to camp, with now 6 kids under 6 years old. But the best part of the camping trip is that we always make this yummy dutch oven dinner. So we thought, what if we just took a day and spent it at the lake, and then made the dutch oven there, and then went home in the evening in stead of camping. So we picked a day, and invited friends and set out.

We were able to find a picnic area just inside the tree line which was nice and shaded, and great protection when it rained slightly for about 5 minutes in the afternoon. The kids had a ton of fun playing in the water and sand. Graham wouldn't get into the water, but no one was surprised about that. He finally got used to touching the sand, and would sit and play in it. He would not walk on it without shoes on though. What a weird kid.

The kids also had a blast running around in the woods by the picnic area. Graham decided to see how many things he could fall off of that day. In addition to tripping over every rock and root in the woods, he was a little banged up, and it seemed like he could not go 5 minutes without crying about something. But he's tough, and he loved it.

So that was our fun day at the lake. Now we probably won't go camping this year. I'm actually fine with that. :)

Coming soon

it's been a while, but coming soon look for a report on all of our little daycations that we have been taking. The Lake, the Zoo, Baltimore, and today we're on our way to DC. We've just been having too much fun to blog lately. (Yeah, that sounds like a good excuse.)

New features on the blog

So I changed a few things around here in the past few weeks. First of all, if you think my kids are the cutest kids around, but you think that my ramblings make you dumber than when you arrived, I included a link to our picassa site. Which completely counteracts the other new thing I did, which was to add a gadget to make it so that things cannot be copied off of my site. I've always been a little nervous about having this a public site, but this makes me feel a little better that now people cannot copy my pictures to their computers.
In other news, today is a big day for us, both kids have well child dr appointments today. Wish me luck. Jesse is coming home early today, so he'll come with us, not like last year.