Playing Tourist

 

We were the proverbial tourists by making sure we had maps to try to figure out where we were and where we were going and could we actually find it on the map. Did I mention we had one tourist map at first and Sylvia and Erik spent the whole day fighting about it? The next day we picked up another free tourist map. Amazing how a simple thing like that can improve quality of life.

 

Erik really wanted to visit the Jefferson Memorial. It is big and impressive and I loved seeing it. Nobody really loved the walk there though, it is just a bit farther out of town than the other memorials and this was after a few days of trudging around town. I finally wised up and bought tour bus tickets so that we could ride to the next few memorials. Next time I'll buy the tour bus tickets on the first day. Definitely worth the money. Live and learn.

 

The kids with Jefferson.

 

Did I mention how we loved seeing all these historic monuments in person?

Caching Through the Snow

Today had to drop off a kid for a backpacking / snow shoeing trip in the White Mountains.

 

What better opportunity than to go caching?

 

It was glorious weather, as long as you ignored the howling winds :p

 

I found eleven caches, which is pretty darned amazing at this time of the year. And had DNFs (Did Not Find's) on three other caches, but I will not mention those. Especially not the one where I failed to find the 900 tons erratic boulder.

 

The Joys of Escalators

On account on living in the middle of nowhere, my kids never ride escalators. To their utter delight they found out that escalators are pretty ubiquitous in DC.

 

There were many shouts of joy when they spotted the first one and the joy never diminished.

 

Our favorite one was the one in Rosslyn metro station. It is HUGE and when you are on it, it seems endless.

 

I found out that that particular escalator is the third longest continuous escalator in the world. We measured how long it took us to ride it from bottom to top. It took 2 minutes and 33 seconds.

 

Life is good with escalators around ^^

Squirrels in the Snow

For some reason the cats don't really like going outside at the moment, I don't know what's up with that.

 

Darkness will want to go outside, ask us to open the door, shake his paw to test the temperature and turn around muttering 'Never mind...'.

 

It is much more comfortable to sit at the door and watch the squirrels. Sometimes you can even jump at them and pretend you could catch them!

 

Good snow entertainment.

 

National Gallery of Art

 

 

 

 

Is It Spring Yet??????

Another snow day. All schools are cancelled.

 

It is coming down hard. These pictures were about one or two hours after the storm started, there already was more snow than I expected.

 

Oh well, maybe I'll try to find my floors. Or the kitchen table. Or even the sink!

 

 

California Girl

Kate spent the February vacation in California! Traveling with some friends who used to live there.

 

She had an awesome time. She came home today and we just downloaded all her pictures.

 

Now I want to visit California too!

 

Lucky duck she is.

 

Spy Museum and National Gallery of Art

 

On Wednesday we made a list of all the things we want to see while we were in the nation's capital. We started at the Spy Museum. We all got a new identity we were supposed to remember during the whole visit. Sylvia immediately flunked the first time a guy asked her name 'Um... I don't know...'

 

We learned a lot about spies and now know to beware of female spies.

 

Next stop was the National Gallery of Art. Wow. I can only say they have an amazing collection and I could easily
spend many days there. Jane was somewhat overwhelmed by the number of sculptures though and concluded 'I like art but this was more like a stone nudist colony.'

 

Sping in DC

When I told people we were visiting DC in February, a lot of them said 'Oh, it is still going to be cold there!' to which I would reply 'That's ok, we are from the arctic.' which usually convinced them to stop talking about the COLD Washington DC weather.

 

The first day we arrived we were still dressed for New Hampshire and already severely overdressed. We all were amazed at the warm sunshine and we even found GRASS! Green grass! We hadn't seen that in ages. And they barely had any snow!

 

It got warmer and warmer and Friday was the best day ever. It was 74 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius) and we were out in just t-shirts, nothing with sweaters or layers or jackets or anything silly like that.

 

The most amazing discovery was finding snow drops. Wow.

 

It was quite a shock to get back to sub zero temps and tons of snow in New Hampshire.

Our First Monument

On Tuesday we got up at 4am, so by the time we finally arrived in Washington DC and had located our hotel, we were pretty darned tired. The kids would have been happy to just stay at the hotel and watch cable television (they are so deprived at home!) but I dragged them out to town and we did some sightseeing.

 

I am so glad we did. We had a great time visiting the Washington Monument. Not only did we get to see it from the outside, but we got to go inside and take the elevator up to the top.

 

Such wonderful views, it was a great introduction to our nation's capital.

 

This was the best start to a great vacation!

 

Ornamental Lanterns

 

Their lanterns were somewhat fancier than we are used to in New Hampshire.

 

We spent a lot of time looking up and going 'Oh!' and 'Ah!!'

 

Yeah, we don't get out much.