Weekend Happenings

We are trying to take advantage of every weekend in the DC area! And, if I do say so myself, I think we are doing a pretty darn good job so far.

The weekend before school started I took the girls into DC to go to the Natural History Museum. They, once again, scootered to and from the Metro and around the mall and then we stashed the scooters in a locker and spent 3 hours at the museum.  A good 1.5 hours of that was in the Curious (spelled Quer?ios... or something like that) area of the museum where there are all sorts of microscopes set up and hundreds of drawers of natural wonders for people to pull out and investigate.  Both Evie and Izzy were fascinated by the grains of sand from around the world and Evie spent some time with a volunteer learning about gniess and other fancy stuff.  There was also a special exhibit on synthetic biology (which I am pretty sure is another word for genetic engineering... but maybe I am being too skeptical... or is that cynical) where the girls pasted together super heroes with whatever "parts" they thought would be best suited for rescuing a person falling from a building.  Izzy opted for a spiderweb hand and extra long hair and Evie went for extra long arms and extra long hair. Anyway, we all received pretty cool DNA tattoos for our participation, which almost made up for the slight creepiness of it :)

On labor day weekend we spent the weekend proper hanging around the house, or really hanging around outside the house, because it was so lovely.  One consequence of having a very low, see through fence, and a corner lot is that every kid who walks by sees the other kids playing in the yard.  This resulted in, at one point, no less than 10 children at our house dispersed throughout the inside and outside.  (Of course a good five of those 10 are "natives" aka our kids and nephews). Genevieve and Izzy have become particularly fond of our across the street neighbors, Rajni and Abani who are 8 and 5 respectively.  Izzy is exceptionally excited to be joining Abani's same girl scout troop at the end of this month!

Sunday evening we decided to take a walk near our house down to Rock Creek. So very fun to have running water (a creek!) about a mile from home. Dylan was out on a bike ride in the area earlier in the day and took a pit stop to leave a little message for us to find...

On Monday (Labor Day) we decided to venture further from home and drove for about 1/2 hour to Sugarloaf Mountain. Although you could drive almost to the top of the "mountain" it still turned out to be a pretty good little hike to the top for the girls. It met my marker of a good hike... by the end both girls were complaining of being tired but not in tears on the side of the trail because they are so tired (that there my friends is the mark of good parenting... just a little bit, but not too much of kid torture

Then afterwards we all went to a very nearby winery that was having its annual grape stomping festival and... you guessed it... all had the chance to stomp on grapes.  Yep, pretty much a life-long dream realized.  Now it was a contest to see who could stomp the most in 45 seconds, making it more like a fitness exam then a relaxed experience, but very fun nonetheless! (There is a video of all four of us competing, but it is on Patrick's phone so I'll have to upload that later!)

The labor day weekend finished with a bang at the annual dog swim at the local pool.  The dog swim is open to all "member" dogs and is the last hurrah for the pool water before it is drained for the winter.  It was a decidedly fabulous and bizarre experience.  We brought Sadie, but I am afraid it wasn't much fun for her...

Then this weekend, which was decidedly hotter than the weekend before, we headed out to the Chesapeake for a little bit of beach time. The girls played in the sand for a few hours, found a few shark teeth, scooped up river muck to add to their sandcastle (don't worry they bathed afterwards) and generally had a good time. We capped off the afternoon with a walk on the little main street and some ice cream.

Next weekend I think we'll be staying closer to home, but will still aim for adventure!