Virginia Vacation

First of all, let me apologize to my loyal lurkers. Yes, you who read every week, but never comment. I'm always a little shocked when I look at my counter and see how many of you there are. I know that my family will understand my lack of recent posts due to my being up three nights in a row with Oliver and his earache. (Yes- he broke our record. In 12 years of parenting, he is the first to have an earache. Crazy!) But I always worry that lurkers, after checking back a couple of times and seeing no new material, will never revisit. Obviously doesn't bother me too much since I like to go long stretches without a post... but this is by far the best journal I've been able to keep since I was a kid, so bear with me.

Anyway- it took a while because I didn't have a camera in Virginia. Well, I actually had one, but I couldn't remember the exact sequence of squeezing on the battery cover whilst pushing on the power key whilst nudging the lens cover. You get the idea. I'm in desperate need of a new one, but I usually have such buyers remorse over big purchases... I'm just procrastinating that one.

I've tried to gather a few goodies that I took from Tyler and Judy's cameras during our visit. It really was great. It had been about 10 months since we had seen Judy and LaVar and I think even longer still since we'd seen Micah and Stephanie. One of the first things Oliver did was tell Judy that she moved too far away and it made him really sad that he didn't get to see her. We got spoiled with seeing them so often when they lived in Fallon and when I was on bedrest.

So here are a few pictures to recap.

We had a lot of fun with our egg hunt on the beach.

We spent a day on a boat trip and visited the Nauticus Museum.

This eel was really fascinating to Tucker.

We did D.C. in a day. Seriously! Before we went, I had planned on maybe visiting 2 museums. We lucked out in that all the museums didn't close until 7:30 that day (instead of 5) so we fit in tons. We visited the Museum of Natural History where we loved the butterfly and orchid exhibits.
When we walked back out onto the Mall, Oliver shouted to Emmaline, "Look! Here are more of those really precious rocks like we saw inside." That night I found his pocket filled up with quartz.
The Museum of American History was great for Savannah since she is studying WWII in Humanities. She took a ton of pictures of things like gas masks and army uniforms.
The Air and Space Museum was Oliver's favorite, of course. I couldn't believe how small those first spacecrafts were. I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to hurtle through space shoulder to shoulder with two other guys.
Tyler was really glad that we finally made it to the Freer gallery. Tucker loved the "Peacock Room."
We rounded out the day with a visit to the Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument. Of course we couldn't leave D.C. without a visit to Ollie's Trolley.

Oliver was in heaven.

Overall a great trip- minus the flight in and out.