2017 :: week 35

August 27

Sunday was my parents' 35th wedding anniversary. We're pretty glad they got married. It was fun to have all the sisters in town on the big day, even though everyone flew in for different reasons. This Sunday marks my first "official" day as a nursery worker. I come home from church more tired than usual!

August 28

We took the kids out of school an hour early Monday afternoon and flew to Washington DC for Tony's last trip as a federal employee.  He recently accepted a job offer at a local company and we are excited for the new opportunity! In the meantime, we wanted to take advantage one last partially subsidized visit to DC. The kids were very good on the flight, especially considering our flight was delayed about an hour and by the time we landed it was WAY past dinnertime. The kids were pretty excited to ride in a taxi to our hotel and to be one step closer to dinner.

August 29

I had been watching the forecast for the week before we arrived and was nervous about the weather Tuesday. It ended up raining all day. Luckily there are a lot of great things to do indoors in DC. Anthony helped me call my first uber and we got dropped off at the Smithsonian Museums. We visited the Air & Space, Natural History and American History Museums. It stopped raining enough that the Nationals' game was only delayed about twenty minutes. There was a pretty steady mist throughout the night and we were grateful that our seats were covered.

August 30

The sun was shining Wednesday and we took the metro to the zoo after breakfast. I really wanted to see the pandas and had read online that they were most active and easiest to see before 10 am. We made it and were able to watch a panda play with a crate and caught a peek of another taking a nap up in a tree. The National Zoo is pretty cool and we were able to see some of our favorite animals. After a few hours at the zoo we headed back to the hotel for naps. Ha! What was I thinking? I was the only one who tried to sleep. That afternoon we had ticket to visit the new Museum of African American History. Because it is so new (it opened in September 2016) you have to have a ticket to get in and I was able to secure us tickets for the last 90 minutes of the day. It was so cool and I could have spent all day reading and listening the the vignettes. We left at closing time, grabbed a bite to eat, then walked the monuments. My feet were very sore that night! 

August 31

The kids and I walked to the north side of the White House (the night before we started on the south side). There were several groups protesting. I saw signs in support of DACA and something to do with Korea. There are additional barriers set up around the WH so we were unable to get as close as we had in times past. Our next stop was to buy a few souvenirs and a return trip to Museum of American History. There is a play area and Spark!Lab that they kids really enjoyed. We met Anthony when he finished with his training and grabbed a bite to eat at Shake Shack, then headed to the airport. We had a great time, but were absolutely exhausted by the time we got home.

September 1

It was a rainy week while we were gone (it seemed like it rained everywhere while we were gone!) and our garden was very productive. Cherry tomatoes are my favorite!

September 2

A few second grade moms organized a potluck lunch at the Roe Park spray ground . It was fun visiting with other second grade families we don't see very often.