Fall Break 08---the last one

For fall break this year mark and I drove up to Gaithersburg MD to visit his sister Alisha and her family. We got there around 6pm friday night after being stuck in traffic for hours to get from the southern side to the NW side of DC. That was not planned well. When we got there we went to eat at a restuarant called Baja Fresh. it's like a mix of baja borrito and Moe's SW grill. pretty good. We played with Nick for a while then went to sleep... we were both exausted.

the next day, mark, alisha, nick, grace and i went to a train park outside of DC for nick to ride the train (he's really big into trains) that was of course not my cup of tea. the seats for the little train were HARD and small. my knees were pushing on the rough iron. after the train ride, nick played on the train playground while gracie ate.

Nick excited about the train

Grace thinking "ugh another train"

then we were off to a farm to pick pumpkins and apples from the orchard. There was a little petting zoo and tractor tires to play on with huge rectangular bales of hay. We took a hay ride over to the pumpkin patch (which was quite a ways away when you were trying not to touch the...HAY)

Climbing the tree to get to more apples.

Grace peeping out of the sling

reaching for the good apples

rolling pumpkins

tuckered out thumb sucker

mark has the pack mule sway that put her to sleep.

After that exausting day in the sun, we met Marion (the bro-in-law) for dinner at Cheeburger-Cheeburger. YUM YUM i got a turkey burger with sauted mushrooms, pickles, and tomato. YUM WAS IT GOOD! It was a weird combo of Andy's minus the greese and Fudruckers. a really good, hole in the wall, small burger joint. SO good. Exausted after the day we all went to sleep.

Sunday was the date day for me and mark. I got up around 8 while everyone else was asleep to start getting ready. then I woke mark up for him to get ready. Then, after he was done, he woke marion up to get ready. We all rode to and on the metro together. marion got off at the medical center and mark and I kept going into DC. We got there around 11. We finally found our way to the natural history museum! We saw some awesome rocks and stuff. Mark, of course, made fun of me quite a bit...

mmm rocks

look at that perfect garnet

can i have counter tops made of this???

mark and his dinosaurs...

after the smithsonian, we walked back into town (away from the mall) to find somewhere to eat for lunch (1:30pm). We walked past lots of places, and i was starving so I kept suggesting we eat at whatever resturant we passed. We finally found one we both agreed on. District Chophouse and Brewery. since it was sunday, they were serving brunch, which took us both by suprise. I ordered the 7th st combo (8-ounce top sirloin grilled and served with three eggs any style and ChopHouse Brunch potatoes.) and mark ordered a salmon plate (salmon steak with almond rice and fruit) I got the Brewer's Marker Oktoberfest beer and mark got some high content Dark HefeWeizen (atleast that is how it was described to us. it was gross)

After lunch we walked back to the mall for the art museum. after the first floor, we were both done. it all started looking the same. so we left. decided what our next plan of action would be (since it was already 4 and we were completely pooped) we made the choice to cut arlington since we have both been there and didn't feel like walking any more than we had to...

we walked up the mall saw the washington monument, the WWII memorial (mark had never seen it. it wasn't quite a nice as the first time i saw it. no old men dressed up in their WWII uniforms) from there walked up to the vietnam memorial (where I imeadately found Paul R. Martin's name) kept walking to the reflecting pool and the lincoln memorial, then around to the korean war memorial. from there we took off towards the potomac river to find the Jefferson memorial (which neither of us had ever seen) That was a LONG walk to the Jefferson memorial. we had to walk all the way around a tidal pool (which looked small on the map but was NOT small in person) on the way around, we stumbled across the FDR memorial. it was beautiful! Lots dark pink granite and weathered bronze, bigger than life statues. When we finally got over there, a school group had just arrived so it was super crowded. when we left, we had to walk all the way back up to the nearest metro station. we caught the orange line up to the connecting station to hop on to the red line which carried us back out to MD. we were so dog-tired when we got back to the house at 7, we didn't even see marion. Alisha and the kids left the house to go get him from school at 8 and i didn't hear them get back.

view laying in the shade

looking towards the pacific

Washintgon monument and reflecting pool in the background

favorite korean war statue

FDR memorial- one of many waterfalls

mark at a different one

washington and jefferson from one side of the tidal pool

Jefferson memorial

I slept for 12 hours that night. i got up around 830 on monday. Marion had taken the day off to spend with the family. we went hiking at Great Falls National Park My feet were so sore from sunday. it was like they were resisting going back into my tennis shoes... it was beautiful at the park. there were lots of families out with their dogs, the weather was nice (around 75) it felt wonderful in the shade. unfortunately the mosquitos thought so too. there were everywhere. we were swatting them off the baby and each other. it was rough.

riding in the pack

looking up at the falls

fearless.

another view of the falls

full belly makes for sleepy grace

mark and bell. she is my kind of dog!

if bell can do it, so can nick.

looking up towards the falls from the calm waters.

after we left there, we relaxed at home. played with the kids and eventually went to sleep around 9.

mark and grace had floor time.

my time with grace.

it's been a long tiring weekend...now for school to start. I've got a test on friday and a project due on friday!