Washington D.C.

My sister and company just moved to the D.C. area, bought a house in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods ever and then re-did a bunch of it since all the stuff was more or less 1960's original. They were finally through with the worst of the renovating when Mom and our family cruised into town. Lucky them, right?

Mom got there before us and hung and with Bec, Troy, and the boys for a few days. We pulled the kids out of school Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday and thereby got there late Thursday night.

The drive out was as good a long drive as we've had since Mark was a baby. Which was a huge blessing.

And the trip was load's of fun too.

Friday we went to D.C. to see the monuments/memorials. I felt that some of our kids were getting old enough to appreciate things of historical significance. Which was kind of sort of sometimes true. We saw the White House and Washington monument with much excitement. And then people (people who had, for the record, just eaten lunch) started complaining that they were hungry. Fortunately Rebecca had brought pretzels. We went on to see the Lincoln Memorial and the new MLK Jr. Memorial. I enjoyed seeing them quite a lot. Although with my sweet children's help, I was forced to wonder why the memorials are so very very far apart. By the time we got the the MLK memorial, Savannah had lost it and everyone was ready to go home. The car was a good mile away. Which wasn't the end of the world. We did, in fact, make it alive despite Mark's doubts about doing so.

And while I'm speaking about walking, let me say how awesomely walker-friendly D.C and all the surrounding areas are. The Baker's neighborhood was so nice and the school was 1/2 mile away and Ben could just walk and it was so pleasant. People seemed to know it too because there were walkers/joggers all about. I was a little envious. Here in Evansville there's a serious shortage of sidewalks, which may go a ways to explain our abundance of, um, chunkiness. Hearing the kids whine about walking (which--yes--I know is normal no matter what city you live in) made me worry that we were raising these wimpy walk-free children. So, um, not sure what to do about that, but it was something that struck me.

Saturday we went to a beach that is 20-30 minutes from Bec's house. It was cool enough to keep huge crowds away, but not so cool you couldn't get in the water. The kids had a blast and we just spent a couple hours there and that's perfect to me.

My sister, Rebecca, if you don't know her.

I have a new goal with vacation and life to have more (i.e. any) pictures of me and Kip together.

The rest of our time there we spent hanging out with everyone, talking, cooking, and eating way too much. The kids played almost shockingly well together and it was a lot of fun.

On the way home, we broke the trip in half and stopped at my sister, Katie's, house, which--conveniently--is smack dab in the middle of the drive. We got there around dinner time. And I can't tell you how wonderful it is to go into a cozy house with dinner being set out on the table after a long drive in the car. We ate and talked. The girls stayed up late telling stories and giggling. And Mark stayed up late doing homework. Which meant he got to sit with the adults for a while so I don't even think he minded.

The next morning we played for a while and then hit the road again. About 2 hours from home, we hit some tremendous traffic, due to a very bad wreck that had happened earlier in the day. We went five miles in two hours and, yes, it hurt. Both figuratively and--for those who had to pee-quite literally as well.

We got home later than expected, but still with a bit of daylight to spare.