Vacation Was Good and Safe From the Storms

We have been back for a few days now, we had no damage from the storms. We spent a good bit of time in our small "safe" place in our house, playing games, singing songs and finally letting the kids watch a movie on the laptop. I am still pretty bad about getting time to update my blog.

We had a blast on vacation. We got to visit the National Mall in DC after our first night there. We left the hotel on the shuttle to the airport to catch the metro right before 10. The kids did great getting on and off the metro. Definitely some scary thoughts going through a mother's head so close to all the things and what could go wrong around the metro. We were good though.

We started with looking through the Smithsonian Castle, of course that looks so cool to the girls. Our first real museum was the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. The kids all enjoyed the animals and bones all throughout. Then the girls found the minerals. They were excited about seeing the the "Hope diamond". Then they found all the minerals and gems. Kid 2 decided this was her favorite exhibit ever. Especially all the jewelry. We just about had to drag them out of that area. They were amazed at all the minerals (not just the jewelry.) Now I know what we need to focus our science on for a little while.

We ate at the Natural History museum----OUCH, expensive. Two cheeseburgers and fries, 3 hot dogs and fries and 3 drinks----$42. The hot dogs tasted great, the cheeseburgers, kind of nasty.

The next museum was the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. The kids loved this museum too, because there is so much hands on stuff. Very fun, very exciting.

We got done at the museums close to 5, that's a pretty long day for all the kids. You can tell, by Bo-bo in his stroller. Dad really wanted to hike on to the Washington Monument and then onto the Lincoln Memorial. We hiked just about all the way to the Washington Monument. The wind was quite cold, kids tired, you can imagine the whining going on. So we saw the Washington Monument quite close, but then it was time to go back.

We spent the next couple of days in the hotel, due to Dad's class and Mom not wanting to face the DC traffic with 3 kids or the metro and the weather was pretty bad the second day, almost freezing rain. The only thing that was a little disturbing about being in the hotel was the construction going on in the hotel. That was not pleasant.

Saturday we left to go home and stopped at a cavern on the way home and saw anthodites, I guess they are only in this cavern. Very cool, small cavern trip.

I'll get some more pictures on flickr.com soon.