March & D.C.

March has been actioned packed!

We colored our eggs early this year since we had travel plans for Easter. 

We got our seedlings started for our vegetable garden (now we just need to create a space to plant them in the next few weeks!).

Reese learned to ride her bike with no training wheels!  Seeing her pride was so awesome. 

Charlie found a new way to stay entertained while we wait for the bus.

Charlie's teacher sent us this photo of Charlie's alphabet progress. He knows all of his letters and can match up objects that start with each letter sound. He's still a total goofball though. :) 

    

We had a very light snow one day, and Charlie took it upon himself to shovel as much as he could from the yard into the driveway. 

Reese celebrated Dr. Seuss week at school, which included a really fun family night. 

Clementine turned one, and the kids had a great time at her party. It is so fun to see how excited she gets when she sees them. They make her laugh like crazy!

We visited the library and checked out a ton of books about Washington D.C. Reese loved reading and learning all about it before we visited. 

Our good friends are currently living in D.C., and we were excited to take the opportunity to road trip to visit for Spring break.  

Our first stop was the World War II Memorial. Reese was excited to find Illinois.

x

The reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial were beautiful.

We got to meet up with another great friend that I hadn't seen in about 2 years. The girls were happy to be reunited. 

Korean War Memorial

The Martin Luther King memorial was beautiful. 

Jefferson Memorial across the tidal pool. The area surrounding the tidal pool was full of cherry blossoms. It was absolutely beautiful! 

x

The Washington Monument is huge, and the kids had fun playing I Spy and spotting it from all over the city.

We headed back into the city with our friends our second day. Our first stop was the White House grounds where Charlie climbed on monuments he probably wasn't supposed to. 

There were a ton of tulips on the grounds. It was so pretty!

Charlie definitely tried to jump the White House fence. 

The magnolia trees were gorgeous.

The kids played SO well together. Reese learned a new math game while we waited for lunch. 

Per Reese's request, we visited the theatre where Lincoln was shot. 

The house he died in is right across the street. 

The kids loved this little spot outside the U.S. Capitol. 

Charlie spent about an hour "taking care of this tree."  It was huge!

The Capitol is under construction, but it's still amazing to see.

U.S. Supreme Court

We made a very quick stop to the Library of Congress. Charlie was not really up for much sightseeing at that point, but I'm glad we stopped in because the building was so pretty. 

    

On Easter, we headed out to Mount Vernon to see George Washington's Estate. 

The tour of the house was very cool, but a TON of hard questions followed when we explored the rest of the property and Reese discovered that Washington was a slave owner. Definitely many teachable moments, but explaining that ugly part of our history is very hard to do in an honest and age appropriate way!

The view from the back porch of the house was beautiful.

The kids were fascinated by this tree. It's the oldest tree on the property. 

George and Martha's tombs are on the property.

Reese was fascinated to learn about how they lived back then. 

There is a museum on the property that was fun to go through. They even had George Washington's teeth! Reese was horrified.

They had a really nice hands on area for the kids. 

When we got back to Gwen and Sean's, they had made a delicious Easter meal. We enjoyed some food, and then had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. 

On Monday morning, we headed back into the city. We spent a little time just walking around and taking in the city again. I couldn't get enough of the cherry blossoms. 

Library of Congress

We asked another tourist to take our photo, and I was SHOCKED to see that she got a photo (on the first try!) of all of us looking and smiling. 

By the end of the trip, Charlie was pretty bored with sightseeing and riding in a stroller. But every time we tried to let him walk, he would run away and dart through crowds. D.C. was way to packed with Spring breakers for that to be enjoyable. So, we resorted to the child leash. He loved it! haha

He picked so. many. dandelions. for me on our trip. :) 

Sean hooked us up with a personal tour of the U.S. House on Monday, which was awesome.  We got to enter through the underground tunnel where all of the congressional offices are. It was cool to see offices for each state with their state flag. Congress was on recess, so it was very quiet. 

The kids enjoyed checking out all of the statues in the visitor's center. Each state has dedicated two statues to represent the history of their state. 

They have the original plaster mold that was used to cast the bronze statue on the top of the capitol building. It was cool to see how big it is in person. 

Reese was excited to find Lincoln, and noticed the anomaly in his statue--he only has one ear! 

We got to see the old Senate chambers. If Senate had been in session, we would have been able to visit the current chambers and sit in and observe the Senate in action, which would have been awesome. I really can't imagine how we would have done it with Charlie though!

The intricate detail of the building is amazing. 

The dome is under construction on the inside too, which is a bummer because the room looked incredible, even through scaffolding!

These are the stairs the President uses to get to the steps to give the State of the Union address. Pretty cool! 

And these are the steps that take him to the underground tunnels to leave the building afterwards!

Before they had their own building, the Supreme Court used to be in the Capitol. The old chambers are still preserved, and the clock on the back wall is the original working clock. It was crazy to be in that room and think of the monumental cases that were tried in the courtroom.

After our tour, we headed to Georgetown for one last lunch. It's such a charming neighborhood. 

We headed home on Tuesday. We made it to Cleveland and got a hotel for the night so the kids could swim. We had the pool to ourselves, and it was great! 

Charlie is obsessed with hotel phones. He immediately turned our room into his office. 

The kids were the best travelers. They really didn't complain at all. We were very proud of them!

I would give anything to have this next moment on video. We stopped at Steak N Shake, and Matt ordered a milkshake with his meal. When it arrived, both kids got crazy wide eyed, and started feverishly searching the table for straws. They didn't waste any time getting a straw in there. I'm not sure Matt got much of his shake. hahaha

It was back to reality and back to school on Thursday. Charlie's teacher has been doing some journaling with him. He narrates to her and makes a picture. We couldn't stop laughing when he brought this gem home. I don't even want to know what his teacher imagines about our family and what we do for entertainment. 

Charlie thought it was hilarious to let Bailey lick his feet. 

And that's a wrap for March! :)