DC

Friday evening we headed to our hotel in Springfield so we could spend the weekend with Uncle Mark in DC. The girls were so excited to see Uncle Mark and Kiara but were very tired by this point since naps had been skipped the entire week.

Uncle Mark and two very happy girls.

After an awesome lunch at Zoes Kitchen, watched some Alvin and then headed to the metro to make our way to our first major league baseball game. It was so much fun! And, now it is safe to say we have a team to root for! Yay.

 

The weather forecast wasn't the best, 105 without the heat index. But our seats were in the shade and lucky for us the lady usher let us sit in the first row of the section. So much better when you don't have people breathing down your necks. Emma fell asleep on Mike on our way there and Lily was beat until she got her present from Uncle Mark. :)

These girls are now very into hats!

We could have stayed the entire game but decided to beat the crowds and headed out after 6 full innings. So excited that this got Lily interested in baseball and softball!

They love the metro too!

We had a great treat at Pinkberry after the game! YUM!!

I am now addicted and so thankful there are none in our area!

Sunday morning, with the same kinda heat filled forecast, we headed to DC...again.

We gave Lily the choice of going into DC or to see the Space Shuttle that she saw on tv.

She chose DC, she wanted to walk in DC using the crosswalk signs :)

She loves seeing the signal change from a person walking and the countdown to the red hand telling her to stop. She loves even more that she can see that at home in VaB and relate it to DC.She feels like she lives in a big city :)

So, our first stop was to the National Archives.

Yes, Lily was interested and loved it.

This girl loves history and learning about it all.

As we were waiting to enter the Rotunda where the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights are held (along with other notes and historical documents) I told her all about it.

This is what I told her:

Lily, we are about to see the most important papers in America. Those men (pointed to the murals on the wall) are the Founding Fathers, they wrote these things for us. We are free and live in the best America ever because of the papers we are about to see. Our country is amazing because of these papers. They are very old (and then discussed the very dim light) and are behind glass so no one can hurt them.

She started jumping up and down. She was so thrilled to see something so important. She loves America. She even thanks God during Grace at dinner for our country. So, being here near the 4th of July seems to be fitting for our girl. And, since there was no photography allowed we got her picture in front of the building, with her bag of goodies from the gift shop :) Her own mini copy of the Constitution, a postcard showing half of the mural in the Rotunda, magnets and a ruler showing all of the Presidents.

Our second stop was the Museum of Natural History, again.

As old as these dinosaurs bones are, I'm not sure our girls will ever get tired of looking at them. They seem to be in awe every time we walk into this museum and is so cool to watch. And, every time we turned around Lily seemed to be posing for a picture! See the pic of her sitting in front of the elephant and a little girl is there with her...first it's difficult to get a pic alone in this place since there are so many people wandering without a clue but this was different, the girl thought Lily was part of the display. She kept poking Lily to see if she would move and since Lily was in pose mode, she didn't. Finally, her mom who was on her phone, looked up and pulled the girl away and I got a pic but not until we all had a very nice laugh :)

We had a great time in DC and left at 6 and missed all of the traffic!

Another trip traffic free :)