So……apparently I’m a bit behind on blogging.
But I’ve learned late is better than never. (Right?)
For Spring Break, we packed up the mini-van and headed to
Washington DC to visit Adam’s sister, Jaime and her fiancé, Ben.
Washington DC is a pretty popular destination for Spring
Breakers. (Note to future trip-planning self: Don't go over Spring Break next time). There is SOOO much to do and SOOOO many cool places to visit. But we were really heading there to see Aunt
Jaime and see where she lives AND get to see some of the touristy spots while
there.
We decided to drive it all in one trip and left at 4am on Monday…….We
had the boys sleep in comfy travel clothes and got them up and into the van
just as we were ready to go……thinking the boys would fall back asleep for a
couple of hours (they usually sleep til 7-8am).
Nope. Not a chance. They were all way too hyped up. (Except for our exchange student, Kenny. He
slept a lot on the drive). J
I’m such an organized nerd that I had made the older 2 boys
binders with different activities to do. Word finds, hidden pictures, cool
coloring pages, mazes, license plate games, travel bingo, etc. Plus, we had a new stash of library books.
And I even managed to save some fun things for the trip home. Our van has a DVD player, but we managed to
only watch 1 video throughout the whole trip (partially because it wasn’t
working on the way home).Took us around a total of 12 hours to get there, including
the times we stopped for meals or gas, although we tried to keep those to a
minimum.
We arrived and Jaime had planned an easter egg hunt for the
boys! They ran around the backyard (yes, they have a backyard! They are outside
of DC a bit) using all of their pent-up energy! We enjoyed a nice dinner
outdoors and probably the best weather we had the whole week.
Jaime and Ben have a lovely home that they bought and remodeled.
But there were 6 of us….and some of us are squirrely with a lot of energy. The perfect solution came through a matter of
other closed doors. We ended up in a rented RV in their driveway! We were close
enough to get to see them a lot. But yet, didn’t have our stuff all over their
house and we had our own separate quarters. Kenny enjoyed their guestroom
though. And the boys thought it was super cool to sleep in an RV, something
they had never done before.
Jamie had a flexible schedule for much of that week and
guided us around multiple fun spots.
On Tuesday, we went to the National Zoo. Our favorite things were the large amount of
big cats that they had and the ornately decorated carousel. Plus, they had orangutans that walked overhead you
on tightrope sort of contraptions. The zoo is known for having giant pandas,
but they were not very social or entertaining while we were there.
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| This is a photo I would like the boys to re-create in 20 years. |
On Wednesday, we checked out the Air and Space Museum and
the Museum of Natural History. The
weather was cloudy, cool, and threatening rain. SOOOOOOO many people were in
the museums – especially the Air and Space Museum. I think the boys would have
enjoyed it more if it wasn’t so crowded.
All of the Smithsonian museums have free admission, so we didn’t feel
too bad about not trying to see everything in them.
On Thursday, we realized how fortunate we had been in
finding a parking spot the day
before. We drove around for nearly a ½
an hour before we found a spot to park. We took in some of the monuments and
memorials on this day. They had a
considerable amount of construction projects going on…..re-turfing much of the
grassy areas along the mall, the capitol building, the reflecting pool was
drained for maintenance. My favorite
spot we were able to see was the WWII memorial.
Its large and just had a lot of different things to take in. Plus, extra
meaningful when a few WWII veterans were visiting the memorial the same time we
were there. We also visited the Museum
of American History that afternoon.
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| At the WWII Memorial. |
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| Visiting Lincoln's Memorial. |
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| Wow. Who knew I could make my hand so unnaturally flat?! |
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| At the Korean War Memorial. |
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| Making sure the Washington Monument was sturdy. |
Friday was the day that we traveled around using public
transportation. We rode the metro, a city bus, a super big escalator, and even
an Uber black SUV. Other highlights of the day were seeing the White House and
finding some stinky tofu for Kenny. We also visited the US Postal Museum. Not
one of the city’s “big” museums, but the boys probably enjoyed it the most out
of the museums that we visited because it wasn’t crowded and they could do the
hands-on stuff as much as they wanted and run free.
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| The Metro was so exciting! |
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| Super long escalator |
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| Starbucks break courtesy of Jaime. |
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| I thought we looked nice enough, but they would not let us inside. |
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| Stinky Tofu is a Taiwanese favorite of Kenny's. We haven't been able to find any restaurants in G.Rapids that have it, but we found one place in DC that claimed to have it. He said it tasted pretty authentic! |
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| Cutest parcel of mail I've ever seen. |
We also squeezed in time for movie watching, playing at the
fun neighborhood park, and some lounging around. DC has so many great and meaningful places to
visit. We know our boys were too young to understand much of it or take it in…..which
means we’ll just have to take additional trips to visit Aunt Jaime and
soon-to-be Uncle Ben in the future!
Overall, it was a great trip. The first big trip we’ve taken the boys on
and done “touristy” things with. Jaime and Ben were excellent hosts. We love
that the boys now have a reference and a memory of where Aunt Jaime lives. We’ve played in their backyard. We’ve pet
their cats. We’ve watched movies on their ginormous TV. I'd probably have even more to say if I hadn't waited so long to blog about it. :) Thanks Jaime and Ben for a memorable and great Spring Break!
