Monica's visit

Monica came to visit us!  It was so nice having her here.  The kids looked forward to her visit so much and they made her lots and lots and lots of presents and talked it up to Elias a lot.  Irene has lots of Monica references (like "this is the song that Monica sang to Elias when he was a baby"), but I'm not sure if she actually remembered her or not.  The other kids definitely did.  They all loved her, though.  And everybody cried when she left.  Me included.

Anyways, when we picked her up from the airport we went straight to the Udvar-Hazy Center.  The kids were really excited to show her the space shuttle.  We saw the hot air balloon buckets and all the trinkets by them, which we hadn't seen before.

The next day we went to Chatham Manor.  Monica had gotten a National Parks Passport when she was visiting Melissa and so we were trying to get her a few more stamps in her passport.  One of the park rangers gave each of the kids a pack of cards with pictures on them and she let Mima and Irene each stamp the stamps on a piece of paper.  They were pretty thrilled with that.  We saw where George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stayed when they visited the house.  And saw the trees that Walt Whitman wrote about while he was there assisting with surgeries.  And we saw the pontoon bridge recreation.  It was fun.

Then we went to Yorktown.  But not the National Battlefield, just the touristy place.  The guy at the second station had the kids help him string apples and put more out to dry.  Irene was really engaged by stringing apples.  Then we went into the kitchen with him where we learned about curing meat and other things.  We were in a lot of smoky kitchens this week.  He asked Monica where she was from, asked if we were LDS and then said he was, too.  Such a small little Mormon world.  We got learn about cannon balls and mortars and see a musket demonstration and each of the kids (except Elias) got to hold a musket.  I love how every place we go they say the same things about the guns: "They're all real, just not real old."

Then we went to the touristy Jamestown.  We didn't have a whole lot of time there so we only looked in a couple of the buildings in the fort and then headed to the ships.  The Discovery was closed and Irene didn't want to go on any ships, so Monica took the other kids on the Godspeed and the Susan Constant.  Then we walked back through the Indian village while Brita and Benton ran through every activity in the village. The kids had a lot of fun.

Next was historic Jamestown, but I miscalculated how long it took to get there (it's like less than five minutes), so we stopped at the glassblowers.  I bought a passport there and got my first stamps.  Red-letter moment right there. ;)  We had some boiled eggs outside the National Jamestown site and then went in through Jamestown and to the place where they have the things they found in the fort.  That's one of my favorite places to visit down there.  They have so much stuff.

Monica wanted to see the ocean while she was here and I figured that that was the closest we would be so she put her feet in the water by the glasshouse, but then I started to feel guilty since it was really a river instead of the ocean so we decided to go to Virginia Beach.


A couple of weeks ago I was at a dinner after a baptism and one of the ladies there was talking about a guy she knew who always referred to Virginia Beach, where he was from, as Va Beach.  So the whole time Monica and I were going there and coming back we referred to it was Va Beach, which is what the signs say, they just don't intend for it to be read that way.

We sent a happy birthday message to my dad, too, since it was his birthday.

We got back about 1:30 in the morning or so.  Stupid construction on 95.

The next day we tried not to move.  We were dead tired.

Wednesday we went to playgroup where, apparently, the kids slid down a big hill on a wagon and crashed into some bushes as their roller coaster.  They had lots of crazy fun that we didn't know about until we left.

That afternoon we got a picnic ready and went to Great Falls with Peter.  It's beautiful there.  We went to each of the three overlooks, got all the stamps in our passports, and (finally) found the bathrooms.  Of course Benton had to pee again by the time we got back to the car.  We looked up the price of some of the houses we passed on the way home.  Such big houses!

Thursday we went to D.C.  And how!  Monica and I ran into the Lincoln Memorial to collect our stamps.  They had eight.  We dropped Monica off at the International Spy Museum and went to the Natural History Museum.  After parking at the Ronald Reagan building, which required them to check all over inside and under our car for explosives or something.  We had lunch at the Natural History Museum and then met Monica on the wrong side of the National Archives building and went in to see the constitution and a bunch of other stuff.  So many things to see.  Then we went to the US Botanic Garden, then to the Air and Space Museum.  Then we hung out by the carousel for a while to rest our weary legs and eat an astronaut ice cream sandwich.  We stopped by the Smithsonian Castle and then we headed to the Washington Monument.  On the way I made Monica stop to get stamps at a park ranger booth.  They told her that the building down the hill from the Washington Monument had 22 stamps, so we booked it to there to get them.  As fast as our rested weary legs would take us.  Which was not all that fast.

After we got our stamps we walked past the Washington Monument, through the WWII memorial, past the Constitution Gardens, along the Vietnam Wall, past the Lincoln, by the Korean War memorial, near (but not too near) the D.C. war memorial, through the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, and stopped at the FDR memorial, where Monica refused to go any further.  Peter went back to the car when we got to the Lincoln, so he met us at the FDR and we went back to Virginia and had dinner at Texas Roadhouse.  The food was really good.  We were really hungry.  Mostly Monica.  And dead tired.  Brita and Benton walked the whole way (not to Texas Roadhouse).  We had two strollers and the sling.  The Bob stroller is definitely superior to the little free one, but it was nice to have two.

Friday we weren't as dead as we thought we'd be so we cleaned a bit around the house and then went to the National Firearms Museum when Peter came home early.  So many guns! We walked in and there was a little section which we though might be all of the museum, but it just kept going and the only thing they had in there was guns. It was actually a really cool place. They had a hand cannon from the 1350s, tons of decorative guns, a bunch of movie guns (like a storm trooper blaster), and a big display of Gatling guns.

On Saturday we left very early (especially for Monica) and headed down Skyline drive to get our Shenandoah Park stamps.

 Then we went to the Frontier Culture Museum. It was amazing! They had farms from the 1700s in different countries, like Nigeria, England, Ireland, and Germany. Then they had a section of farms from different time periods in the United States. Most of the houses were real buildings relocated to the museum. The American ones were from the Shenandoah valley. The kids got to play games, and saw wood, and talk to living history actors about what life was like in each of the places. It really was a cool museum.

On the way in to the museum there was a sign that said, "BEAT THE HEAT WITH FRESH FUDGE" which we thought was hilarious. When Monica was buying fudge in the store she asked if they guaranteed it would keep us cool since that's what the sign said. The fudge was really yummy. She got six kinds and we ate them all.

After the museum, we headed over to Appomattox. Peter was tired so I drove, which scared Monica. There are some windy roads in Virginia (with really fast speed limits). We got to the courthouse just in time for the movie. They had lots of neat artifacts, including General Lee's copy of the terms of surrender. Then we went to the McLean house, saw the tavern, popped over to the jail, and looked in at the general store. Then we headed back to the bathrooms. (Naturally.) Lucky for you I have not included all of our bathroom stops. Then we drove through "Historic" downtown Appomattox, got ice cream, and went home.

...And that doesn't include all the stuff I forgot like Monica taking the kids to Gettysburg, us going to the library.  And a long awaited trip for Monica to Aldi.  You've got to love Aldi.

With all that running around we still had time to play Dominion, watch Leverage, and Sporcle. Just like old times.