2014 :: week 20

May 10

I wanted to get a nice Mother's Day picture with the kids in front of our flowers, but it started pouring rain about an hour before church. I had to settle for a picture on the fireplace. I also had to settle for a picture with a mad Will. When I picked his glasses up the night before one of the sides fell off in my hand. He was very upset with me for breaking his glasses, never mind the fact that the were basically broken when I picked them up to clean them. He's upset in this picture because I tried to get him to wear his old glasses to church and he thought they "felt weird." We left immediately from church to drop Anthony off at the airport and both kids fell asleep in the car. Late afternoon naps are not a great way to start off a week. That night neither child went to bed easily or fell asleep quickly, so I got to spend the entire day with them. Good thing I love them so much. :)

May 11

Lauren and I ran errands to get ready for our trip while Will was at school Monday afternoon. We stopped at the library and couldn't resist putting a few puzzles together. Lauren has gotten very into puzzles recently. She gets out a puzzle or two (or more) at least once a day. She's getting quite good and has declared herself a "puzzle expert." She'll do wood puzzles like this one, but more often than not she puts together our floor puzzles or a 48-piece Frozen puzzle (with a little help) she received at Tony's work.

May 12

The kids and I flew through Nashville to Washington DC Tuesday and to meet up with Anthony. He had another full week of work away and we wanted to get in on the fun. Our flights went about as well as I could have realistically hoped they would (I did not get to sleep). When we arrived in DC we took the metro to Rosslyn and met TJ who helped us find our hotel. Then we quickly left and headed to Union Station to board a train to Baltimore and the Orioles game. That day we traveled by car (to the airport), plane (from KC to DC), metro (airport to hotel and hotel to union station), train (DC to Baltimore) and van (friend Kevin drove us back to our hotel). Will was very pleased with the various modes of transportation we used.

May 13

After Anthony finished with work Wednesday evening we made our first visit to the National Zoo. Most of the free stuff in DC closes at 5:30pm, but the zoo grounds are open until 8pm. All of the buildings were closed, as were the shops and dining, but you could still walk around and see a few animals. The highlights of our evening zoo trip were a roaring lion, tigers, elephants, bald eagles and sea lion.

May 14

My friend Nikki and her kids met us at the Air and Space Museum Thursday afternoon. It was pretty crowded so after about an hour we took the kids outside and let them play on the mall. Will's favorite activity was to chase birds and Lauren's favorite thing to do was forage "dinner" for her bunny. Will had been looking forward to this museum the most out of all the things we were going to do in DC, but when I asked him what his favorite part of the day was he said, "making a new friend."

May 15

Friday night we finally got around to visiting the monuments. There was no way I was going to take the kids to DC and not get pictures of them at the White House, etc. The weather was gorgeous and despite a few setbacks, we had a great evening.

May 16

The last thing we did in DC before racing to the airport was visit the other air and space museum in Virgina. Pictured behind the kids is the space shuttle Discovery. At this point in the trip the kids were not humoring my picture taking very well.