Possibly my favorite thing in the entire museum was the Wright Brothers plane. The actual First in Flight plane. How is that even possible? The museum had replaced the fabric, although the original fabric was on display in a case there in the exhibit, and one of the propellers had broken on a subsequent flight, so it had been replaced – again, the original was still there in the exhibit. Just very, very cool.

We could only take pictures in one room in the Archives, so when Lindee texted that she hoped we had pictures of the Mallory and Charlie in their costumes, we went tearing up there to get pictures made before the final program of the evening began. Here are our Clara Barton and our young George Washington.  It really was just a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Wow.

The day – and night – in Washington really did exceed my wildest dreams. We had no problems driving into the city and parking, and headed straight to the metro for a ride to the Air and Space Museum. We could have ridden, but Mallory really wanted Charlie to have this experience. Including riding the escalators waaaay down…

We spent the entire day in the museum, and as is typical with Smithsonian institutions, still didn’t see it all.  One of our favorite exhibits was the one on aircraft carriers, and Mallory and Charlie both pointed out to me that this was the Kitty Hawk, which made me pretty teary, that they both knew this was Harry’s ship.  Just one of too many cool moments in an absolutely fabulous weekend.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the Archives, so will have to wait until they send us some to include them in my write up of the weekend – but it was spectacular.

Finally getting pictures downloaded from our amazing trip this past weekend. We left York County right at 1 Friday afternoon, and arrived in Springfield, VA, to spend the night maybe around 9 pm. It had been a long time since Charlie had spent the night in a motel, and he loved every single thing about it. Here he and Mal are pushing the cart with our luggage up to our room. I think we could have carried it, but he was having none of that 🙂

Mallory and Clara have been after me to take pictures of Kimbrell’s Dr. Seuss nursery, so I finally thought to do it when I was at her house picking her up this week. Here is her book wall – so cute 🙂

It was a crazy day.  I went to pick up Kimbrell, which I don’t usually do on Thursdays – that’s the day I usually go visit Gran – but her other babysitter was sick, so I filled in.  By the time Alex left for school, I had missed a call from Lindee, who reported that Clara had injured her foot the night before when she slid on her sockfeet on their hardwood floor, and she was taking her to the doctor.  Turned out to be just a bad sprain, but she’s on crutches for a few days, so she just spent the day with us while she got used to maneuvering around on them.  She really did an amazing job, even coming up all the steps to get in our house.  Again – the sideways picture.  Mumble, mumble.

I am so sorry that I haven’t figured out yet how to get rotated pictures to download here from my new camera – obviously I still have more work to do! This week, though, our craft project involved painted light bulbs. The original instructions were for making lightbulb penguins, but this crazy crew was not interested in those at all. They loved the ideas of using lightbulbs, but we have flowers, people, tigers, and flamingos in the work so far. I love their creativity, especially since that’s not a thing I was ever blessed with. Here is June cleaning her light bulb with alcohol, which according to the instructions would make the paint stick better. It seemed to work. I can tell this may be a project that requires several weeks to complete – stay tuned for picture updates.