Family Trip, part 8 (or, Where We See The Botanical Gardens and the Capital)

One of our other favorite parts of our trip to DC was seeing the Botanical Gardens at the Capital.
Part of the highlight of this was that we got to take the Metro to get there.
                                    

Then had a snack from a street vendor

and got to see a Washington DC squirrel (this was VERY exciting to Aleah)

Then...(in no real particular order because I am too lazy to re-order the pics once I uploaded them) the botanical gardens

One of the very few pictures of mom...courtesy of dad :)

These next photos are courtesy of Dylan. It is so fun to see things from his perspective!

and...the Capital

We sure do have a beautiful capital building! 

While we were there, it was undergoing some renovations to help it stay that beautiful.

Do you see Aleah in the bottom corner?

Family Trip, part 7 (or, While Mom Was At Her Class for Work)

I should have Mike "guest write" this post since I don't really know exactly how everything happened when I was at my class over the weekend, but I don't exactly picture him sitting down to write a blog post.

Well, you'll have to just deal with my interpretation (and likely just lots of pictures without much explanation...)

So, first stop was the Air and Space Museum



Always pushing buttons ;)



Not sure what the story is here...the weather was warm but these people are clearly ice skating...

Next was the Museum of Natural History

"Give me gum gum..." (movie reference anyone...)

Someone isn't very happy...

Roar!!!

True story. This is the Hope Diamond. Mike said to Aleah "You need to make sure you find a boy who can buy you a diamond like this". Immediately, Dylan asked "Me???" Another person there who heard the exchange actually started laughing :)

This is good!

because this is my kids!

The budding photographer

and the final proof that they were on this part of the trip with daddy...souvenirs!

Family Trip, part 6 (or THE PEEP STORE!!)

During our visit to National Harbor, one thing I KNEW we needed to make time for was a visit to The Peep Store. If you know Aleah at all, you know that she has a sweet tooth that is unparalleled! Anything sweet, of any kind, and she is in love, so...she LOVES peeps (what's not to love, right...marshmallow (pure sugar) covered in pure sugar). Dylan even was majorly excited when he heard there was a store in the area and said that we NEEDED to go there.

With much more credit to my husband than to me, we avoided purchasing any of the peep pillows, peep plush toys, peep t-shirts, peep caps (you get the idea), and only purchased...PEEPS.
Dylan--yellow (a purist); Aleah--purple (because...its purple)

Family Trip, part 5 (or Where We LOVED the Water)

We had been having very unseasonable warm weather at home when we went on our vacation (now of course, late winter has been showing that it is still around a bit. No snow thankfully!), but it was even WARMER in Alexandria, so...we spent time down by the water. The Potomac River, specifically. We wanted to get to the ocean, but just didn't have the time to fit that in.

So instead, we loved the water in Alexandria (ok, we weren't in the water, but we enjoyed the waterfront "Ok kids, just walk past this guy up here"; "But why...we like magic shows!"; "Well yes, but we can't be patrons for the 49 different street performers here, so we aren't going to stop by any of them because then we will be a magnet for all the others"; okay, maybe we didn't really say that last part, but we did say the first part!)

and loved our ride on a water taxi...

Mama and her girl

Dad and his kids
(if you ever think there are more pictures of Aleah on my blog, it isn't related to importance or anything, it is just a lot easier to catch her because she doesn't move nearly as fast!)

 and we loved the water in National Harbor, Maryland...

Nothing like a sweet picture of your precious girl cosied up to a nostril

Yep, just to prove that we were there together.