Me and the Boys: Quick spring break trip to D.C.

This is a really long post and probably not the most exciting. I am recognizing it as more of a journal entry for a family vacation than a source of entertainment for others. :)

We had planned on taking a big trip for spring break exploring D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia but ended up taking a 48 hour trip to D.C. and then coming home. Mom C. & Uncle Jedd had visited the week before and I think we were all tired from that visit. (More pics on that to follow.) Then I had a 24 hour bug that wiped me out and left me feeling yuck and tired before we left town.

We finally got out of town late afternoon on Tues. Here we are crossing the bridge over Yorktown headed into Gloucester. We took the scenic route up 17 to Fredricksburg to avoid Richmond traffic. Bad idea since it had a lot of windy roads and Tucker decided to get carsick again.

I fell in love with this little town called Tappahannock. John Smith actually landed here in 1608 but was driven back to sea by the local native tribes. It is this picturesque, quaint little town with beautiful homes surrounding the water. LOVED it.

We had one little adventure where a giant turkey ran out in the road. It was so big and Todd didn't want to hit it. It would have been like hitting a deer. (Okay, so maybe a slight exaggeration but it really was a big bird that would have made a big mess on the van.)

Look at the cute little ice cream shop...oh wait. Are you too distracted by seeing how far Cooper can stick his finger up his nose?

We finally made it into D.C. Can you see the Capitol building? There was so much construction once we got there that our GPS kept screwing up. It was a little stressful.

I loved the buildings there. We got to see a lot of them as we were lost looking for the hotel. We also saw a lot of ghetto complete with liquor stores, police cars and ambulances. We were so relieved to make it to the hotel.

Can you see the Washington Monument?

After a night of no sleep thanks to our terrible two, Tucker, we woke up ready to be tourists.

See. We had "tourist" written all over us.

We stayed at the Hilton dear Dupont Circle. Neat area but next time we will make sure to stay someplace with an indoor pool. It was a little disappointing considering it was a four star hotel. We will go back to our Hampton Inns and Holiday express when with the boys. :)

We survived the metro. That was an adventure with our big double stroller but Todd did a great job of navigating us through the tunnels.

There are a lot of pictures of buildings that I loved. Not very exciting for you but I sure loved walking around and seeing all the different architecture. Such a pretty city.

The boys outside the museum of Natural History. That is the only museum we actually explored thanks to the two little ones.
Turds.

The inside was so beautiful.

Fisher was old enough to appreciate it. I felt bad we had to cut it short due to Tucker and Cooper. Fisher was so interested in everything. He loved all the bones and was really excited to see the mummies.

The trouble started when we took the boys out of the stroller. They kept running off in separate directions. When we put them in the stroller they would scream and yell.

Dinosaur bones.

Fisher was a happy camper. Mom and dad were frazzled.

These two were just downright grumpy.

It was packed which didn't help matters. Serves us right since it was spring break and the beginning of the cherry blossom festival.

We finished off by fighting our way through the crowds to see the Hope Diamond.

After deciding that museums probably weren't the best route to go with the boys (much to Fisher's dismay) we decided to stick to the outside monuments. There is not a shortage of that in the area so we figured we could just walk the boys until they were exhausted.

Problem was that we couldn't get the boys to move from the half way point between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument.

(I love Cooper's face in this picture.)

Not only did we fail to motivate them to walk toward ANYTHING but they also insisted on playing with the gravel.

We went to Washington D.C. only to have our children play with dirt that they could have been playing with in our backyard.

And they continued to play in the gravel for about 45 minutes in which we moved about a whopping 15 ft. The gravel came to an end when Cooper and Tucker started chucking it into the faces of unfortunate runners.

Bye Bye dirt.

Proof that Fisher made it to D.C. even if it was only for a short visit.

Tucker was not going to go back into the stroller without a fight.

The kid is fast.

Little turkey.

I don't think I have mentioned the fact that it was cold. The sun was shining (thank goodness) or else we really would have been cold. It was really windy and with the exception of some of these next few pictures, it definitely did not feel like spring.

We didn't make it to all the areas with the blossoms but we did find a small section that had started to bloom. It was a little late this year.

Fisher was starting to get hungry, Cooper was angry and Tucker was ready for a nap.

I was enjoying the pretty trees.

Fisher had to resort to picking his nose. (Now all I need is a picture of Tucker doing it and this post will be complete.)

If you ask Fisher, one of the highlights of his trip was eating a hot dog from the vendor.

He was so excited. I must say that the hot dogs in D.C. were way better than the one I ate in NYC.

I mentioned before that we stayed close to Dupont circle. It was such a cool, eclectic area. We passed by a lot of embassies too.

Another building that I loved.

Later we decided to go take the boys to look at the temple.

It was beautiful.

Too bad we didn't make it out of the car.

You can see the temple in the right window. The boys were having meltdowns and this was about the time that Todd and I starting toying with the idea of going home instead of continuing on the other cities.

In trying to find food, we ended up touring the University of Maryland. Such a cool campus. I loved the buildings.

I love the all of the churches that are out here.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and ready to continue on our journey. Then the boys woke up. By the time we had packed up, checked out and loaded up our car we had decided to just head home. While Todd and I were in better moods, the boys were not.

It was a cloudy, overcast day so it wouldn't have been a beautiful day for sight seeing anyway.