DC: Day 1

My favorite travel tip is to let your kids guide your trip. Our trips are almost completely kid-centric, and that's okay! We started out on Saturday morning at the Museum of Natural History. On the way there, we stopped to get a quick glimpse of the Capitol.

And then it was on to see the dinosaurs! This is a T-Rex skull, which Will loved.
Henry's favorite dinosaur is a stegosaurus. Can you see it behind us?

If you look closely in this picture, you can see a skeleton within a skeleton on the wall. It was so cool! The big fish ate the little fish and then died and was preserved.

I got to take a quick look at the Hope diamond before we moved on to more bones. Here you can compare your height to that of an elephant's leg.

And we saw skeletons of more animals. The museum looks pretty empty in this picture, but it was crazy-crowded, even at 10 am when they opened. We just beat the crowds to this gallery.

The next stop was at the Insect Zoo at the museum. My boys love bugs, of course, so this was fun for everyone. Henry was obsessed with the honeybees. He stood at this exhibit for 20 minutes, watching the bees crawl in and out of the tube, and then we had to pull him away screaming. The funny thing is that the Houston Museum of Natural Science has this exact same exhibit, and he's never cared one way or the other about it before Saturday!

After a quick lunch at the museum, we walked back to our hotel for afternoon naps. Then we boarded a double-decker bus to see some more of the city's sights. The bus was one of Will's favorite things about our trip, probably because he didn't have to walk!

The bus picked us up right outside our hotel.

And it took us by the Capitol, monuments, and museums.

We saw the White House.

Will did not want his picture taken and really didn't care too much about the White House.

But everyone liked the water fountain and ducks nearby.

We even shared our goldfish with them.

The boys were tired and spent quite a bit of time just like this. Despite walking all over the city with boys in our arms or on our shoulders, Gene and I managed to summon enough energy for a nice dinner out at Ris. We got a sitter for the boys and celebrated my birthday, just the two of us. It was the perfect end to our perfect first day in DC.

DC: The Travel Day

Gene travels a lot, but the boys and I never get to go with him on his journeys -- until now! Gene was in Washington, D.C. all last week and is still there now, so the boys and I flew up on Friday and spent three full days exploring the city with him. The boys were so excited about this trip. Will had been counting down the days til we left and woke up Friday morning saying, "This is the day we're going to Washington, D.C.!" This was my first time to travel alone with both boys, so I was pretty nervous, but Gene took our big suitcase so I only had to deal with a small carry-on, the diaper bag and two sweet little boys. They did so well!

As you can see, they loved watching the planes at the airport. And yes, I dressed them in matching outfits the entire trip so I wouldn't lose them!

Despite not napping, the boys behaved well on the three-hour flight and continued to behave while I navigated the DC Metro. Fortunately, it was pretty easy since I had booked rooms at L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, which is literally on top of a Metro station. The best part was that Gene arrived at the hotel before we did and met us outside the Metro stop to take us up to our rooms. Will was a bit disappointed that Friday was only a travel day because he didn't get to see anything, but we more than made up for it with the rest of the trip.

This was the view from our rooms. Throughout the whole trip, Will knew to use the Washington Monument as a landmark!We were supposed to have adjoining rooms but we were upgraded to a suite, so Gene and I had our own room and the boys' room consisted of a pull-out sleeper sofa for Will, a separate sitting area and a dining room. It was huge, and perfect for our rambunctious, Washington D.C.-loving youngsters!

Birthday Girl

My birthday was on Tuesday and the boys were so excited to celebrate with me. Henry especially looked forward to my "birthday party" at Gramma and Hanka's house, and Will wanted to know if all my friends were coming over. It was a very small "party" that even Gene missed due to a trip out East, but it was a special day nevertheless!

My parents made me one of my favorite meals from my youth: broiled avocado cups! They are so tasty but I never make them because Gene's not a huge fan of avocados. My little boys liked them, though, so they might just make their way into the dinner rotation at our house!

And what's a birthday without birthday cake? That was definitely the boys' favorite part, since they like sweets just like their mama!

My parents also got me a great gift, which Will opened practically by himself.

They gave me a set of Danish Christmas plates. They have too many for their new house and weeded out by giving me my favorite series.

This set of plates shows a family going to chop down a tree from the woods, then bringing it home, decorating it, and waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. These have always been some of my favorite Christmas plates, so I'm so happy to have them for my own kitchen. Thanks, Gramma and Hanka, for making my birthday so special!

The Dot Artist

My friend Tiffany introduced us to dot art when she bought Henry Do-A-Dot paints and a dinosaur activity book for his birthday this year. Henry has since become absolutely addicted to dot painting and wants to paint all the time!

I have to say that I love it too because it's so easy and mess-free (compared to traditional painting). Henry will dot paint for 45 minutes. The only problem is that we long ago ran out of pictures in his special dinosaur coloring book so now we have to draw them ourselves! Fortunately, Gene is a master artist and I am pretty good at tracing. Can you see any of the dinosaurs in the paintings below? Doesn't this make you want to do-a-dot too?

Raspberry Fingers

Yes, I let my boys play with their food.

They love raspberries (who doesn't??), but they really love to pop raspberries on their fingers and shout "Raspberry Fingers" before popping those juicy raspberries into their mouths.

Raspberries are the perfect finger food, wouldn't you say?

Cukes!

This is the last week of the spring season of our CSA. We've enjoyed the best vegetables for the past 10 weeks and can't wait for the fall season to begin in September. I think Henry is going to miss the baby cucumbers we've been getting. He pulled this one off the counter and devoured it in no time!

Yum-O!

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs Everywhere!

Will has a slight obsession with dinosaurs these days. It all started when Aunt Jess introduced him to "Dinosaur Train" on PBS back in March. Now we watch "Dinosaur Train" all the time, visit the science museum and zoo to see dinosaurs up close and personal, and of course read lots and lots of books about the mighty creatures. One of Will's favorite games is to play paleontologist. Can you tell what this picture is all about?

It might just look like random piles of toys strewn across our living room, but Will actually very carefully made dinosaur fossils out of these objects so that he could go on a dig. Can you see the five different "skeletons" below? He had to preserve his dig site from Henry, who just wanted to grab the "bones" and run! Since my parents know about our dinosaur obsession, they brought back these cool dinosaur t-shirts from their recent trip to Wyoming. Aren't they fun? They're perfect for our dino-loving duo! Thanks, Gramma and Hanka!

They even had some dinosaur photos on their camera to show the boys.
I wonder where this dinosaur obsession will take us next?