A couple days ago the four of us set out for Washington DC. We boarded the plane with Paul's folks and flew over this big beautiful country of ours and landed in Mayyrland. Paul sat with Andrew on the plan and me with Allison. They were both fantastic on the plane ride over. Andrew was the lucky one to get the DVD player that was charged, so he got to watch a movie, so that left allison and I to dress her babydoll, then undress her babydoll, they dress her babydoll then undress her babydoll. That lasted about 1 1/2 hours, then snack time then nap time. She managed to fall asleep and sleep for about 2 hours. Once we landed, we made our way to the hotel and only got lost 15 times.
the next morning Aunt Katie and Mike joined up with us and we hit the smithsonian museums and saw the air and space museum and the natural histroy museum. The kids liked both surprisingly. I thought they would get bored, but they managed to survive 6 hours of museums. The dinosaur exhibit was particularly exciting for the kiddos. Once they saw the big T-rex, they both couldn't help themselves. Andrew yelled "I don't believe it!!" To say they were excited would be an understatement. After looking at a lot of stuff behing glass, we went and picked up dinner at the Chillie bowl, which is a famous spot for people like President Obama, and Bill Cosby to eat at. He got our chillie dogs to go and brought them over to the mall and ate them in front of the lit up Lincoln Memorial with an awesome view of the Washington Monument. We made our way up to the top of the steps of the Lincoln memorial and took some great pictures. Both kids were super hyper and screaming and having a ball, despite it was 10:00pm, we had just eaten dinner. Once we starte headed to the car it started raining. We made it back to the hotel nice and safe and dry.
The next day Paul, the kids and I went off my ourselves while Paul's folks, Katie and Mike went back to D.C. to look at more monuments. We decided to drive into Baltimore. We stopped off at Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner was written. We played around in the fort for about an hour and went into all of the "caves" and had a good time. We then made out way down to the water. We walked along their outdoor shopping area where there were tons of resturants and shops. It was a beautiful downtown area, a mix of seaport village in san diego and the pike in Long Beach. We ate lunch at this deli with a beautiful ocean view. After lunch we headed to the #3 kids museum in all of the U.S.A. Discovery Port. It was 3 stories of kid heaven. It was surprisingly empty. It had multiple rooms such as a pretend dinner, where the kids got to make the "pretend food" behing the counter, it was equipped with a stove, an oven, a sink for the dishes, cabinents to store all the dishes, and a cash register. Paul and I sat in the booth and orderd food from the kids and they made our meal, served us, washed the dishes and then checked us out at the cashe register. Another room was a water room where you could build your our water fountain, go inside a big bubble, or splash in a big water table where you could build dams or create waterfalls. There were about 12 rooms which kept us busy for 4 hours. In the middle of the bulding was a tall jungle gym with netting walkways, slides and tunnels. We were all exhausted after this awesome experience. We headed back to the hotel and met up with the rest of the family for dinner. Once again we ate dinner about 9:30pm. Andrew and Allison scarfed down oysters, clams and shrimp before they devoured their ribs.
Overall we are having a great time. 2 days down 11 more to go :)
